Yes, GSRs are better at routing but they lack L2 capability and it's
a
very expensive (and lousy unless you have Engine3 cards) GE
plattform.
Steinar Haug
On the other hand, 6500s can do both L2 and L3 rather well, including
BGP.
Aren't most of the 6500 blades the same as the 7600 ones anyway? Between
these two IMHO we are looking at a blurry distinction between a router
with very good switching capabilities and a L3 switch with very good
routing capabilities.
Michel.
> On the other hand, 6500s can do both L2 and L3 rather well, including
> BGP.Aren't most of the 6500 blades the same as the 7600 ones anyway? Between
these two IMHO we are looking at a blurry distinction between a router
with very good switching capabilities and a L3 switch with very good
routing capabilities.
Until the Sup720, it was simple: 6500 with Sup2/MSFC2/PFC2 and at least
one OSM equals 7600. The difference is mostly a marketing one.
I don't understand how you can differentiate between a router and an L3
switch. In my view "L3 switch" is a marketing term. All high end boxes
do hardware based IP forwarding, whether their ancestry is from the L2
or the L3 side.
Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug@nethelp.no
Does the 7600 have the same BGP Scanner problem as the 6509 does?
I've still yet to see anything that suggests that the difference between
the 7600 and the 6500 is more than just a paint job and a marketting job.
Simon
7600 is also vertical boards whereas the 6500 is horizontal.
7600 is also vertical boards whereas the 6500 is horizontal.
Yep, I think from now on, we should make this a primary distinction
between switch and a router: If a device has vertical line cards, it is a
router, if horizontal, it is a switch.
Works well for 7500/12000/5x00/6500. 
-alex
6500-NEBS has also vertical boards ...
Arnold
7600 is also vertical boards whereas the 6500 is horizontal.
Aren't most of the 6500 blades the same as the 7600 ones anyway?
Between
A small problem... all of my 7200s have horizontal line cards as do the Juniper M5/7/10/20. The smaller 7100, 3700, 3600, 2600 also have horizontal line cards too. So... here is a correction.
"From now on, we should make this a primary distinction between switch and a router: If a device has vertical line cards, it is a router, if horizontal, it is a switch, unless there are two or more vertical slots within any horizontal slot plane, then it is, in fact, a router."
How does that sound?
-Robert
Tellurian Networks - The Ultimate Internet Connection
http://www.tellurian.com | 888-TELLURIAN | 973-300-9211
"Good will, like a good name, is got by many actions, and lost by one." - Francis Jeffrey
A small problem... all of my 7200s have horizontal line cards as do the
Juniper M5/7/10/20. The smaller 7100, 3700, 3600, 2600 also have
horizontal line cards too. So... here is a correction."From now on, we should make this a primary distinction between switch
and a router: If a device has vertical line cards, it is a router, if
horizontal, it is a switch, unless there are two or more vertical slots
within any horizontal slot plane, then it is, in fact, a router."
Excellent point, that also fixes the "problem" for riverstone 8x00
-alex
> Aren't most of the 6500 blades the same as the 7600 ones anyway? Between
> these two IMHO we are looking at a blurry distinction between a router
> with very good switching capabilities and a L3 switch with very good
> routing capabilities.Does the 7600 have the same BGP Scanner problem as the 6509 does?
7600 runs the same code as 6500 with native IOS. It *is* the same box,
as has been repeatedly pointed out.
Maybe you could expand on the BGP scanner problems - we haven't seen
them all the time we've been running 6500 native with full routes (about
1.5 years now).
Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug@nethelp.no
I've still yet to see anything that suggests that the difference
between the 7600 and the 6500 is more than just a paint job and a
marketting job.
7600 is also vertical boards whereas the 6500 is horizontal.
* arnold@nipper.de (Nipper, Arnold) [Mon 13 Oct 2003, 22:53 CEST]:
6500-NEBS has also vertical boards ...
Well, guess what? That's because the 7600 is a 6509-NEB chassis.
Take a 6509, fill it with the most expensive versions of DFC, MSFC,
Supervisor, switch fabric cards etc., fill it all up with memory,
and the only difference with an OSR-7609 is the faceplace.
Compare the pictures at
http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/lan/cat6000/6000hw/inst_aug/01over.htm#69700
and
http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/core/cis7600/hardware/osrouter/osr_over.htm#69700
or for the plain 7609
http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/core/cis7600/hardware/cis_76xx/osr_over.htm#1068171
(the text leading up to this image leads to Figure 1-3, which is
incorrect, btw)
So, yes, Simon was very much correct - differences between 65xx and 76xx
(for equal values of xx) are initial configuration and the paint job.
-- Niels.
To me something that uses hardware assist, setup by the cpu per
destination, is an L3 Switch. Something that does equal route lookups per
packet all the time is a router.
Whee! Even more of a reason not to buy one for routing 
BGP Scanner taking up close to 100% of CPU on a box periodically.
GSR doesn't seem to do it, but a buncha other cisco boxes do.
Its more irritating than anything else, especially when customers complain
that when they traceroute they see ~200ms latency to the router...
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Robert Boyle wrote:
> 7600 is also vertical boards whereas the 6500 is horizontal.
Yep, I think from now on, we should make this a primary distinction
between switch and a router: If a device has vertical line cards, it is a
router, if horizontal, it is a switch.Works well for 7500/12000/5x00/6500.
A small problem... all of my 7200s have horizontal line cards as do the
Juniper M5/7/10/20. The smaller 7100, 3700, 3600, 2600 also have
horizontal line cards too. So... here is a correction."From now on, we should make this a primary distinction between switch
and a router: If a device has vertical line cards, it is a router, if
horizontal, it is a switch, unless there are two or more vertical slots
within any horizontal slot plane, then it is, in fact, a router."How does that sound?
Like the start of some new RFC
Tom (UnitedLayer) wrote:
So a 7500 with a fast cache is a L3 switch?
The closest definition you'll get to an L3 switch is a box which does
primarily or only Ethernet, can easily become an L2 ethernet switch again
with different software, and uses software hacks on a normal ethernet CAM
to do forwarding lookups. Other than that, it's just generalizations and
stereotypes. Oh and of course, marketing.
On the GSR, dCEF is turned on by default, and the GRP does the bgp
processing while the linecards continue to forward packets without
interruption (well at least until an update comes in and dCEF starts
pointing the packets out the wrong interface at any rate). 
75xx/GSR, dCEF? 75xx/GSR are L3 switches then. Not to add flame-bait, but..
http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/software/ios121/121cgcr/switch_c/xcprt2/xcdcef.htm
Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
bgp scanner cpu usage == number of neighbors * number of routes in table
lots of neighbors would cause this, for longer periods. If running SUP1A/MSFC this could be worse than with MSFC2 (slightly more CPU power), and much worse than SUP2 I'm guessing.
Tom (UnitedLayer) wrote: