ISR 4000 performance license

salemmahara · ‎12-17-2019

Hello everybody,

We are going to order a couple of ISR 4000 to upgrade our routers and also to have redundancy at the same time.

Here are some questions which I am going to kindly ask you for answering them:

1. If we order a router with 200Mb default performance, does it shape traffics greater than 200Mb? (What would happen if connect its Gigabit interfaces to different networks and want to pass 1Gb traffic?)

2. Is the performance license a 1-way or 2-way license? ( I mean is it a combination of ingress and egress or 200Mb ingress and 200Mb egress at the same time?)

3. For what reasons we would need to order ASR1000X instead of ISR 4000? ( Just throughput reasons or features as well) . I mean is it possible to put 4431 at our network edge and connect our branches to it through IPsec , DMVPN , Dynamic routing and QOS and,,,, without any problem if overall required performance is about 500Mb?

Joseph W. Doherty · ‎12-18-2019

#1 I believe traffic over the performance cap is policed (i.e. dropped, not shaped). You would be unable to obtain a sustained gig transfer rate with a 200 Mbps performance limit.

#2 I understand it to be an aggregate of all traffic crossing the "backplane", which more or less would be the sum of all ingress or sum of all egress, not the sum of both. I.e. You could have 200 Mbps ingress with 200 Mbps egress.

#3 Usually for performance reasons. A 4431, should be fine supporting 500 Mbps, even with various services. With a performance license, it should also be find supporting gig. With a boost license, it can run beyond gig, but what performance you'll obtain will depend on then nature of your traffic and the router configuration. (BTW, there's separate licensing for IPSec perforamance.)

salemmahara · ‎12-21-2019

Thank you Joseph,

Are you sure about 200Mb ingress and egress at the same time? I am still dubious about it and don't know how can I find accurate information. Sending E-mail to Cisco has no result, because they said their partners are in charge to answer these kind of questions.

Can you please ask above question from a Cisco partner ? Unfortunately, it is not possible for me. First and second questions are really demanding for me.

Joseph W. Doherty · ‎12-21-2019

I don't have access to any Cisco partner.

As to ISR 4K performance, this might help:

https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/routers/4000-series-integrated-services-routers-isr/miercom-isr4k-report.pdf

Giuseppe Larosa · ‎12-23-2019

Hello @salemmahara ,

@Joseph W. Doherty is right these routers have an internal multigigabit fabric.

What you can get from them depend on the licenses you buy.

You should look at ciscolive.com that is free and you can find the internal architecture of these platforms.

Edit:

https://www.ciscolive.com/c/dam/r/ciscolive/emea/docs/2018/pdf/BRKARC-3147.pdf

Hope to help

Giuseppe

salemmahara · ‎12-24-2019

Hi @Giuseppe Larosa ,

Thanks for replying. Unfortunately, I can not open the link you've sent.

You mean, ISR 4000 policy the traffic? So there would be performance issue. I thought these routers shape the extra traffic.

Another clarification, do you believe that the 100Mb license is equivalent to 100M RX and TX at the same time?

Cisco is a bit tricky and it is predictable when they say 100Mb, they mean a total RX and TX of 100M!

Giuseppe Larosa · ‎12-26-2019

Hello @salemmahara ,

you may need to create your account to be able to access the on demand library on ciscolive.com.

I apologize if I have been unclear in my previous post.

Edit:

About your other questions:

Internal traffic is not limited that is you install an etherswitch module with GE ports but the "WAN" ports are limited by software to the specified value.

Many years ago Cisco marketing figures were tricky summing the RX and TX direction.

Now, because competitors like Juniper HPE/Aruba Fortinet , Arista use "FULL Duplex" figures I think also Cisco had to change its old habit to sum RX+TX.

So in my humble opinion , as far as I know , the figures are full duplex.

Please note that the Miercom tests reported by Joseph (+5 well deserved) had been performed in a lab by Miercom that is not Cisco.

I attach the presentation for you here

Feel free to ask for further help but you should be able to understand

Edit2:

I currently work for a Cisco Gold partner so I have access to CCW what @Joseph W. Doherty have reported is the current understanding shared among all Cisco Community experts.

Edit3: