Quick question about purchasing WAN connection equipment for Metro-E

[Joshua Engels]

Hey guys,

I have a quick question I am hoping some of you can help me with from your experiences.  We are currently moving our datacenter to a remote hardened facility.  This will require us to use a 1 Gig WAN connection between our corporate headquarters and the new facility which is across town.  We currently are a Cisco shop and have Cisco 4500 Catalyst Switches with Sup 6 on the headquarters site side.  We need to purchase something for the remote end at the very minimum that will support a gig of throughput.  Also that will support Voice QOS etc.  We were looking at the 2900 Series ISR's but it appears that these routers, even though they have gig interfaces, do not truly support a gig of throughput across WAN links.  Should I look into the ASR's or should I look into a small switch for this?

Just looking for a direction to go in and hoping some of you can provide insight.

Thanks,

Josh           

[Edison Ortiz · Accepted solution]

You should look into the ASR line.

While small switches will definitely support the required throughput, they don't provide advanced features such as QoS.

With that said, if you are going to connect your device at line rate to the provider network, you don't need advanced QoS such as traffic shaping or CBWFQ.

You simply need a device that preserve/implement QoS markings which are available on small switches.

Traffic Shaping come into place when you purchase a sub-rate circuit.

Regards,

Edison

[Alessio Andreoli]

hi All,

although i 100% agree on the ASR line i have some doubts about the QoS features. i did implement the 2900 series and used pretty much big range of QoS features they exist on my company. Traffic shaping, policing, marking , CAR etc.. I do believe that the QoS features are related to the IOS (XE,XR,normal) you are implementing much more than to the specs of the hardware used. Unless particular settings like bufer depth, i'd say that the 2900 series is well aware of QoS features.

Happy studies

Alessio

[Edison Ortiz]

We are not discussing wether the 2900 ISR G2 supports Advanced QoS (it does).

We are comparing the selection of ASR vs low-end switches (3560, 3750).

Those switches lack advanced QoS services while the 2900 ISR G2, as you clearly stated, does.

However, the 2900 won't provide 1Gbps line rate throughput regardless of its interface support.

Please refer to this spreadsheet on performance rating:

http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/downloads/765/tools/quickreference/routerperformance.pdf

[Joseph W. Doherty]

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Posting

You're correct, no 2900 router really offers sustained gig throughput.  For just one gig link, the minimum ISR is probably the 3945E.

Almost any (modern) L3 switch that provides gig ports should be able to easily sustain at least one gig link capacity.  QoS capabilities on L3 switches can vary considerably.  Here too, most modern manageable/smart/intelligent switches (L2 and L3) provide some QoS capabilities, but whether a particular model is adequate for your need is the 64-bit question.

You've noted you need to support Voice, and you've also mentioned you'll have a gig WAN link, but unfortunately that's not enough information to suggest whether any small switch will be adequate.  One may, and if there is, it might cost much, much less than an equivalent performing "router".