Drew Weaver wrote: | Howdy. We?re looking at upgrading our border router(s) | from 7500s to (something) yet undetermined.

I love my 7304-G100's as a nice step up from the 7500's, and short of the GSR or J-vendor. Be sure to get the G100's and not the NSE-100 (no PXF). Order of magnitude less horsepower, same cost, don't know why they even sell them.

| I?ve also heard of gear from companies like route | science that could possibly achieve the same thing. But I?ve heard | that it runs like $300,000 for a box, is there anything a bit smaller | for companies within the oc-3 range? That could accompany my router?

Drew mentioned InterNAP's Sockeye and NetVMG stuff, and Bruce pointed out OER:

Cisco Optimized Edge Routing (OER) http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns471/networking_solutions_w hite_paper09186a008022dbfa.shtml http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns471/netqa0900aecd800f5584.html http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns471/networking_solutions_p ackage.html

There's also Infiniroute, formerly Proficient Networks. (couldn't he'p mahself, Bruce) In any event, unless you're running your links at near capacity, I would say that occasional manual balancing (an hour once every few weeks or so) is a LOT less effort than implementing and caring for all the above new moving parts. Chris Affinity Internet