We're at the growing point where we need a dedicated P router for a core device. We are taking a serious look at the NCS5501. Is there anyone else using a NCS5501 as P Router or just general feedback on the NCS5501 if you are using it?
The big downside is it's only has a single processor
I Can't justify a ASR9K or NCS5500 Chassis yet.
Ι would be interested to use NCS5501 as a core or aggregation P router to aggregate smaller PE routers. Its low cost (compared to ASR9K) and the small features that one can need in order to run a P router it makes the platform attractive.
I would like to hear other use case (eg. Internet peering routers)
Best Regards,
Michalis Bersimis
Hey,
We're at the growing point where we need a dedicated P router for a core device. We are taking a serious look at the NCS5501. Is there anyone else using a NCS5501 as P Router or just general feedback on the NCS5501 if you are using it?
The big downside is it's only has a single processor
P would be the position I'd be most comfortable with NCS5501.
Particularly BGP free core and Internet-in-VRF. Single control-plane
does not seem problematic, usually design should allow any single core
node to be taken out of service without customer impact.
Please talk to your account team about roadmap, what features are
coming in which release in next 3 years. And ask them what are their
plans with this IP
We were looking at them for the same role as well, P router makes a lot of sense in places where the network comes together (for us often ahead of CMTS boxes etc) but routing is still required due to many paths being available. We are using juniper ACX5000s for this as well currently.
We're at the growing point where we need a dedicated P router for a core
device. We are taking a serious look at the NCS5501. Is there anyone else
using a NCS5501 as P Router or just general feedback on the NCS5501 if
you are using it?
Hi,
While we're not using the NCS5501, we do use the "previous version",
NCS5001. We're not yet at a point to care about the minuscule buffers.
Set-up : initially P-router in a very small BGP-free core (ISIS + LDP),
then added route-reflector functionality too.
As a P-router they usually behave correctly, except for the some cases
where they start routing incorrectly (according to Cisco, the wrong
label is programmed into hardware). That should have been fixed with
6.1.2, which we have deployed, until we recently had the same issue on
6.1.2, on the exact same box. We expect having some fun with the TAC
about that.
The big downside is it's only has a single processor
Yes, but:
- it's powerful enough (we ended-up using them as RR too, and ~1.2M
routes in RIB pose no problem)
- ours being about half the price of a 5501, we have 2 of them on every
site. If you can afford the same (2 / site) do it; If you don't -
review the copy so that you can (Brocade SLX 9540 looks like a good
alternative).
Hello.
We are running 5001 also and we have the same issue with it programming the wrong entry into the hardware.
Interesting to hear that the issue is still in 6.1.2 since we were thinking about upgrading to that one to see if it fixes the issue but I think we will give it a pass.
Seems the BU cant find why its happening only that it indeed is happening. They don’t seem to be able to duplicate it in the lab either last we heard.
/Gustav
-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
Hi Radu-Adrian, have you done any MPLS PE functions on the NCS5001 ? ...like MPLS/VPLS L2VPN, or L3VPN ?
I'm asking because I tried a NCS5001 in my lab about a year or 2 ago and it was pretty bad. At which point I was told to only try it as a P box from a Cisco engineer....at which point it dropped from my consideration since I needed to replace lots of Cisco ME3600's with mpls edge functions, and I ended up settling on the Juniper ACX5048.
I'm wondering if Cisco improved that NCS5001 in more recent versions of XR to included functional MPLS L2 and L3 vpn's.
-Aaron
Hi,
We didn't test any of those features. My understandig was that they all
require extra licenses that would bring them "out of scope"
($$$-wise).... and our need was for pure "P-routers"... actually being
technically unable to perform as PE was kind of hidden requirement 
We are currently looking at the 5501 as a BGP'less super Core / P router
configuration - as a replacement for the troubled 6840 platform.
Curious who is running these with Brocade LSP's running through them ?
I'm not overly convinced these are the right platform yet and happy to take
direct feedback.
We followed Cisco Recommendation on installing 6840's into our Core as P
routers / BGP'less Super Core and had nothing but issues with them.
Wrong forwarding labels / stuck LSP's. / heaps of Optics problems.
Only to be told later that MPLS-TE Auto-Tunnel won't be coming to the
platform either. We’ve been pretty unhappy with that platform.
Seems the Cisco code can't handle new LSP mid-point creations with the same
LSP ID.
We currently have an issue around Brocade wanting to recalc and LSP
path(midpoint failure), but wanting to use the same LSP id to create it-
Cisco's want it to expire out first.
Cisco sees this particular issue as Brocade not understanding the RFC - yet
Brocade say the same thing ...
Curious of anyone out there today using NCS5501's with Brocade LSP's
transiting them ?