If you are after copper aggregation and broadband user feature support, you might also want to take a look at the Cisco10000. Not sure of its POS capabilities, but depending on your density, might be cheaper $/port than the 7600. Heard mixed reports on the E-series from Juniper (software mainly, so it does depend on what you try and do with it), but if you want line rate ACLs, QoS etc, hard to go past the M-series (spec. M10i, M7i). OT: love the doilly comments on the 7500. I'll have to ask Mum to make me a few... Keith Burns Principal Network Architect ICG Telecommunications IP Ph: 303-414-5385 Cell: 303-912-3777 "The dogs may bark, but the caravan rolls on...."

-----Original Message----- From: neil@DOMINO.ORG [mailto:neil@DOMINO.ORG] Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 1:27 AM To: ras@e-gerbil.net Cc: bcm@inkline.com; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: GSR, 7600, Juniper M?, oh my!

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7500s? In 2004? Throw those things in the trash where they belong. It's always amazing to me how many people will cling to obsolete things for years just because it is what they know.

Don't agree with this. For E1/T1 access these boxes are fine. Yes they are long in the tooth but they are quite capable. I wouldn't spend a huge amount of time or money trying to make them do anything else though.

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Even a Juniper M5 will do 16 OC3's with line rate filtering and forwarding. There are probably a dozen design considerations based on requirements you haven't described, but if you're doing primarily sonet, 7600 isn't really the way to go.

Depends on what "primarily sonet" means.

Regards, Neil.