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Migrating an L3 3750-X stack to 4500-X ?

sebastien3
Level 4
Level 4

Hello,

Do you think there is a performance gain in migrating an L3 3750-X stack to 4500-X ?

Currently the 2 x 3750-X with license IPServices (in stack mode) have :

+ 350 Vlan with IPV4 and IPV6 routing
EIGRP
BGP : only to receive 3 or 4 default routes from the COREs

Thanks for your feedback

4 Replies 4

marce1000
VIP
VIP

 

 - Please note : https://community.cisco.com/t5/routing/how-many-catalyst-4500xs-can-be-stacked-to-gather/m-p/2224622#M215207

 M.



-- ' 'Good body every evening' ' this sentence was once spotted on a logo at the entrance of a Weight Watchers Club !

Joseph W. Doherty
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

"Do you think there is a performance gain in migrating an L3 3750-X stack to 4500-X ?"

Possibly, depends whether you're bumping into any of the resource and/or architectural limitations of the 3750-X stack vs. a 4500-X.  (The two biggest differences between those two, that come immediately to mind, the 4500-X is a single "box" where your 3750-X stack also has to contend with a stack cable, and I believe the 4500-X offers more interface buffer resources.)

The main advantage of the 4500-X is that it has 10G ports.

The stack is really different from the 3750-X but in the architecture I need to have two devices = 4500-X with VSS.

My main question is will the 4500-X be more powerful than the 3750-X ?

Does the 4500-X allow lower latency, add more VLANs, transfer speed, etc...

"The stack is really different from the 3750-X but in the architecture I need to have two devices = 4500-X with VSS."

I'm glad you mentioned needing two devices, in a VSS config, as I had considered asking if you were planning for such.

Using VSS at its best, is a bit different from using a Catalyst 3K stack.  The most important usage consideration, is you want everything connected to each VSS member, as you want to avoid all cross VSS pair traffic.  The cross VSS pair traffic should only be seen during some failure situations.

VSS is "best" for core or distribution role devices.  Stack likely better for edge role devices.

"My main question is will the 4500-X be more powerful than the 3750-X ?"

Well, that's an "it depends" answer.  Both the 3750-X and the 4500-X are all ports wire-speed.

"Does the 4500-X allow lower latency, add more VLANs, transfer speed, etc..."

As you already noted, the 4500-X has 10g ports.  These, of course, would allow a 10x transfer rate over gig ports.

Regarding latency, that might be reduced - depends on "kind" of latency.  For example, transferring the same size frames at 10g, should take 1/10 the time as transferring at gig, but the beginning of the frame's arrival will be the same for gig or 10g (unless the 4500-X supports cut through switching).

As noted in my prior reply, usually a Catalyst 4K has more hardware buffering resources for ports than a Catalyst 3K.  So, if two ingress ports go to the same egress port, a 3K is more likely to being to drop frames/packets sooner than a 4K.

I doubt there's much, in any, difference in the number of VLANs either switch would support.  Unless you're dealing with thousands of VLANs, likely a moot point.  However, even with your 350 VLANs, if your running PVSTP, there could be benefit moving to MST.

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