Cisco as Big Brother (Was Re: Cisco's AIP vs HSSI)

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1

I took a look at the Ascend GRF (which stands for "Goes Real Fast"). I
was impressed with the performance of it, but not with the size. It's
too small. With only 4 slots, it can have 8 HSSI ports, 8 ATM OC-3
ports, or 4 OC-12 ports. I don't think that's large enough for most of
the big providers. It also has no V.35 ports, which are important for
some of us that are doing a mixture of high-speed links and slower T1.
The number of packets this thing can push through it is impressive, though.

-Jon

2

Jon,

Are you aware of the 16-slot Ascend/NetStar GigaRouter?
I am not sure if this router supports HSSI/Ethernet
yet.

          Randy

3

I'm fairly sure it supports both, as well as FDDI and all the other media
cited in the earlier message.

Regards,

--John

4

I just got a GRF 1600 in to test and I love it, I would like to here all
the bad stuff about them ASAP, because I plan on sending them a PO for 8
of them.

They now have a 16 port and cards like:

4 port FDDI
2 port HSSI
4 port ethernet 10/100 Base T
8 port ethernet 10/100 Base T
2 port OC-3
1 port Oc-12

Nathan Stratton CEO, NetRail, Inc. Tracking the future today!

5

I have also heard that a few GRFs are planned for a future MFS NAP in
Atlanta or Orlando. Does anyone have more information on it?

-Mulugu

6

Nathan,

The vBNS (www.vbns.net) has five GigaRouters, one for each
Supercomputer site it serves. Each GR has one HiPPI interface,
one ATM/OC3c card, and one FDDI card. We run OSPF and BGP4 over
a full ATM PVC mesh. We recently started to deploy v4.7.6,
which enables the GigaRouter to take full routing. Our NetStars
work well with our Cisco 7000/7507s, but our OSPF and especially
our BGP4 configurations are very vanilla.

We have had some issues with the GigaRouters during my tenure
here--I prefer to discuss details one-on-one. Overall, I think
NetStars are a viable alternative to Cisco.

          Best Regards,
          Randy

7

Hmm.. It's been awhile since I spoke with the Netstar people (approx 8
months or so). At the time, the box supported 10baseT, AUI, 100baseT,
FDDI, HSSI, OC-3ATM (I believe) and maybe CDDI. No V.35 low speed stuff.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Patrick J. Chicas
Email: pjc@unix.off-road.com
URL: http://www.Off-Road.com

8

That sounds right, as far as I know.

Regards,

--John