On Wednesday, July 30, 2014 03:06:55 PM Jimmy Hess wrote:
I would generally suggest you look at it as a long term decision, at least before jumping to the next incremental (modest increase) on the upgrade treadmill. It depends on whether the 6500 is still a perfect match for your network other than the prefix limit. Your vendor should think of your equipment as an "investment" to be protected, by exploiting your feelings of loss aversion, but the upgrade treadmill is a trap..... next thing you know, you will have to replace the chassis, then you will need new linecards......
Next up the road are the 6800's. Essentially SUP-2T's, so you get software parity Day One, but still the same supervisor module. We are running 6880's (which are the fixed SUP-2T's, but with modular line cards), but only a core switching (Layer 2 Ethernet) role. Great port density since the 10Gbps ports are now SFP+, but oversubscribed line cards 2:1, since each slot is 80Gbps, but the line card comes with 16x 10Gbps ports. You can disable oversubscription and go into performance mode, which disables half the ports on the line card - we do that. IP-/MPLS-wise, whatever you can do on the 6500 you can do on the 6800, but I can't say for sure as we're running them as switches. That said, if your goal is IP, just consider the ASR9000, MX, and whatever else other vendors can do in this space. Mark.