I just have a quick qustion. I'm in the process of determining weather or not to purchase several VIP cards and modules for a few 7513's I have at remote locations accross the United states. I spoke with some friends I have at cisco in referance to known related problems with the VIP cards (according to cisco there were close to non) but I am interested in some input from people who are already using VIP cards on 7513's. Thanks, Rob -- **************************************************************** * * USLD Communications * * Robert A. Davila * Your One Source For Communications * * Network Administrator * 1-800-460-USLD * * * Http://www.usld.com * ****************************************************************
Robert, We run VIP2-40s in amost all of our routers. If you are going to be pushing a lot of traffic, buy them. The best thing about them is that they support distributed switching. It dropped the CPU load on our routers by 40%. Mark Robert Davila wrote:
I just have a quick qustion. I'm in the process of determining weather or not to purchase several VIP cards and modules for a few 7513's I have at remote locations accross the United states. I spoke with some friends I have at cisco in referance to known related problems with the VIP cards (according to cisco there were close to non) but I am interested in some input from people who are already using VIP cards on 7513's.
Thanks, Rob
I just have a quick qustion. I'm in the process of determining weather or not to purchase several VIP cards and modules for a few 7513's I have at remote locations accross the United states. I spoke with some friends I have at cisco in referance to known related problems with the VIP cards (according to cisco there were close to non) but I am interested in some input from people who are already using VIP cards on 7513's.
Thanks, Rob
We have VIP2-40s running all over our network with various port adapters (OC3, 8port serial etc) and have had no problem besides flakiness when we first implemented them. Everything is working well now. brad reynolds ber@cwru.edu brad@iagnet.net
On Dec 30, 12:25, "Robert Davila" <robert.davila@mail.usld.net> wrote: ^^^^^^ Blasting in from the future.
I'm in the process of determining weather or not to purchase several VIP cards and modules for a few 7513's I have at remote locations
Since you say "several", there's one amusing (or not, as the case may be) gotcha, which is that interface cards are reset and initialized sequentially. For normal cards this is no big deal, but for VIPs the process is considerably more involved and time-consuming -- the VIP is a stand-alone system with it's own special IOS image, and it takes 2-3 minutes to boot. Hence, expect a 7513 fully loaded with VIPs to spend half an hour booting before it starts doing anything useful. Cisco is apparently working on parallel booting, but AFAIK it isn't there yet. -- ------ ___ --- Per G. Bilse, Director Network Eng & Ops ----- / / / __ ___ _/_ ---- EUnet Communications Services B.V. ---- /--- / / / / /__/ / ----- Singel 540, 1017 AZ Amsterdam, NL --- /___ /__/ / / /__ / ------ tel: +31 20 5305333, fax: +31 20 6224657 --- ------- 24hr emergency number: +31 20 421 0865 --- Connecting Europe since AS286 --- http://www.EU.net e-mail: bilse at domain
On Dec 30, 12:25, "Robert Davila" <robert.davila@mail.usld.net> wrote: ^^^^^^ Blasting in from the future.
I'm in the process of determining weather or not to purchase several VIP cards and modules for a few 7513's I have at remote locations
Since you say "several", there's one amusing (or not, as the case may be) gotcha, which is that interface cards are reset and initialized sequentially. For normal cards this is no big deal, but for VIPs the process is considerably more involved and time-consuming -- the VIP is a stand-alone system with it's own special IOS image, and it takes 2-3 minutes to boot. Hence, expect a 7513 fully loaded with VIPs to spend half an hour booting before it starts doing anything useful. Cisco is apparently working on parallel booting, but AFAIK it isn't there yet.
Hogwash! While I'm not a complete fan of the Cisco boot process (in particular, the apparent redundancy of much of the bootstrap process), it takes nothing like 30 minutes to load a fully loaded box. A number of our 7513's are populated with only VIP2-40s (in all 11 slots), and take on the order or ~5 minutes to load. The most time-intensive operation is decompressing the images (which themselves are getting a bit silly in size, especially the -boot images). Downloading microcode to VIP2 processors takes relatively little time. ---- Kirby Files Network Engineer GTE Internetworking kfiles@bbnplanet.com
On Dec 15, 17:26, Kirby Files <kfiles@bbnplanet.com> wrote:
half an hour booting before it starts doing anything useful. Cisco is apparently working on parallel booting, but AFAIK it isn't there yet.
Hogwash!
And Merry Christmas to you too.-) Checking my notes from the time, parallel/fast boot was supposed to go into 11.1(8)CA, but I seem to recall it didn't make it. Good to know it's there now, but which version is this? -- ------ ___ --- Per G. Bilse, Director Network Eng & Ops ----- / / / __ ___ _/_ ---- EUnet Communications Services B.V. ---- /--- / / / / /__/ / ----- Singel 540, 1017 AZ Amsterdam, NL --- /___ /__/ / / /__ / ------ tel: +31 20 5305333, fax: +31 20 6224657 --- ------- 24hr emergency number: +31 20 421 0865 --- Connecting Europe since AS286 --- http://www.EU.net e-mail: bilse at domain
Checking my notes from the time, parallel/fast boot was supposed to go into 11.1(8)CA, but I seem to recall it didn't make it. Good to know it's there now, but which version is this?
It certainly has been around for quite some time; all 11.1(13.5)CA and subsequent images have it, and probably quite a bit sooner. Perhaps this is unclear because you overstated the nature of the problem. Even with 11 slots and without this feature, it never took 30 minutes. I think the actual number was more like 30 to 60 seconds per VIP2. At least, that's my understanding. --jhawk who continues to think this is really not nanog-relevent crud and further, even if it would have been, this thread should have died, and we're all being socially irresponsibly by furthering it; insert cynicism here.
On Dec 15, 17:26, Kirby Files <kfiles@bbnplanet.com> wrote:
half an hour booting before it starts doing anything useful. Cisco is apparently working on parallel booting, but AFAIK it isn't there yet.
Hogwash!
Whoops, forgot to humor-caption that. ;-)
And Merry Christmas to you too.-)
Likewise. :-)
Checking my notes from the time, parallel/fast boot was supposed to go into 11.1(8)CA, but I seem to recall it didn't make it. Good to know it's there now, but which version is this?
Most code nowadays is synced to 11.1(13.5)CA, and has been synced to at least 11.1(10)CA for a while. Microcode downloading enhancements *were* commited to 11.1(8)CA, I believe. I believe that was CSCdi45727. --kirby
participants (6)
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Bradley Reynolds -
John Hawkinson -
Kirby Files -
Mark Tripod -
Per Gregers Bilse -
Robert Davila