policy routing / GRE tunneling on C6500

[poeschger]

maybe someone has experience on this one:

- I would like to create up to 200 GRE tunnels

- traffic will be routed into the tunnels by means of policy routing

- each tunnel bandwidth is about 10mbit/s

- resulting in up to 2gbit/s GRE traffic

it seems that C6500 platform with sup720/sup2T does both GRE tunneling and policy routing in hardware

if true speed should not be an issue

a friend was telling me that i need ES+ linecards for GRE support in hardware on C6500

datasheets for sup720/sup2T say that the supervisor does GRE in hardware *hmmm*

who is right?

do i really need the ES+ line cards for GRE hardware support?

what drawback will I get if not using ES+ line cards?

will sup720/sup2T be able to meet my performance criterias?

maybe there is a better suited platform than C6500?

thx

/pat

[Reza Sharifi]

The 6500 with Sup-2T does support GRE tunnels, but it is limited to 390Mbps.  See table-1 in this link:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/modules/ps2797/ps11878/data_sheet_c78-648214.pdf

A better choice may be the ASR 1000 series. Depending on the ESP, you can go from 1000 to 4000 GRE tunnels.

Data sheet for ASR:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/routers/ps9343/data_sheet_c78-450070.html

HTH

[poeschger]

thanks for your reply reza

390mbps? the datasheet says 390mpps (million packets per second)

the value of 390mbps would be a bit low for hardware supported GRE...

thanks for the hint regarding ASR1000 ... already had a look at it

still wondering about the need of ES+ line cards and impact if not using them

/pat

[Reza Sharifi]

Pat,

I am sorry about the mpps vs mbps.  In general, GRE and IPSec tunnels haven been functions of routers.  So, for that many GRE tunnels, I would recommend using a router vs a switch unless you require a lots of 10Gig ports which 6500 is a good choice.  Have never used the ES+ cards.

Thanks,

Reza