cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
cancel
739
Views
28
Helpful
5
Replies

HQ Router capacity planning

jcin
Level 1
Level 1

Dear All,

Let say that I want to have 200 branch offices connect to HQ with DLSW & IP traffic.

How to determine the Cisco Router platform for HQ?

How many branch offices Cisco 7200/7500 Series can handle?

Is there any reference for this?

Thank you in advance.

Kind Regards,

Janto

5 Replies 5

bkelley
Level 1
Level 1

Janto, it depends on your transaction rate and how your break up your logical functions. WIthout getting into specifics, your HQ location will most likely need WAN termination ,DLSW peering, SNASW, bridging and CIP functionality and perhaps IP summarization.

Here's a good paper on DLSW perfromance:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/iworksw/ps2474/products_white_paper09186a008007ce75.shtml

Gather your data:

You should figure out your transaction rate (3270 in/out) + other non-DLSW IP transactions and design around that. You will need to consider backup routers

and backup media paths.

Here's a similar design I used a few years ago for a customer that's still

working fine today:

MAINFRAME HOST X (5) w/multiple LPARS

|

ESCON DIRECTOR x (2)

|

7513's X (2) w/2 CIP's

|

| (Fast Ether or Token RIng)

|

7206 NPE200 X (6) - For DLSW Peer and SNASW Function

|

|

|

7206 VXR's NPE300 X (6) - (WAN Frame Relay Termination + IP summarization)

|

WAN Frame Relay

|

Field routers X (1000 sites) (DLSW peer + Frame Relay)

|

SNA PU type 2.x

The point I wanted to make is that the design was based on a measured

transaction rate. Based on this data, it was decided to break apart the functions. The CIP routers only handle the Channel protocols. We used a string of 7206 routers at HQ to handle only SNASW (DLUR) and DLSW.

We used another string of 7206's to handle WAN aggregation and IP summarization. We estimated that the 7206's at the DLSW level could handle up 300 - 400 sites based on transaction rate. The field routers point to a backup HQ DLSW peer router if the primary fails. SO, normally each HQ DLSW peer connects to less than 200 sites , but can connect to over 300 sites in backup mode.

As far as the CIP router goes, you may want to run ESCON to more than one Director if you use Directors.

Hope this helps.

Brian Kelley

---------------------

Hi Brian,

Thanks for your reply.

I'm a newbie to IBM networking and I don't have figure about the transaction rate for now.

Actually the customer already have existing network like below:

Mainframe x 2

|

Cat3900

|

7204VXR NPE300 x 2 - For DLSW Peer

|

| (Fast Ethernet)

Cat6506 MSFC - Core Switch

|

| (Fast Ethernet)

7513 x 2 - For WAN termination

|

| (VSAT Broadband)

Branch Router (Cisco 3600) x 120 sites - For DLSW peer + VSAT

|

Branch LAN & ATM machine & SAA GW

2 x 7204VXR NPE300 handle 120 sites with CPU load around 30%/router.

What is your suggestion (roughly) if we want to add another 200 sites (smaller branch)?

Thank you in advance.

Kind Regards,

Janto

Hi Janto.

Sorry for piggybacking in, but I have noted you currently implement the solution I am designing for my Customer- HQ with 120 sites. Your info about the CPU load is very interesting and please give me some more hints: are you running DLSw TCP encapsulation? How much memory do you have in your 7204VXR NPE300 routers?

Thank you very much!

michele

Hi Michele,

We're running TCP encap.

cisco 7204VXR (NPE300) processor (revision D) with 122880K/40960K bytes of memory.

Thanks,

Janto

Janto, I would add one more 7204 and spread the load across all three (106/7 sites per 7204). If you loose a 7204, you can use one of the remaining two for backup of the failed peer.

Also, your depiction suggest IP straight into the mainframe. Are you using OSA adpaters and Enterprise Extender?

B.K.