Ask the Experts: Understanding Cisco ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers Platform Architecture and Packet Forwarding Troubleshooting

[ciscomoderator]

With Xander Thuijs

Welcome to the Cisco Support Community Ask the Expert conversation. This is an opportunity to learn how to Cisco ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers with Cisco expert Xander Thuijs. The Cisco ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers product family offers a significant added value compared to the prior generations of carrier Ethernet routing offerings. The Cisco ASR 9000 Series is an operationally simple, future-optimized platform using next-generation hardware and software. The ASR 9000 platform family is composed of the Cisco ASR 9010 Router, the Cisco ASR 9006 Router, the Cisco ASR 9922 Router, Cisco ASR 9001 Router and the Cisco ASR 9000v Router.

This is a continuation of the live Webcast.

Xander Thuijs is a principal engineer for the Cisco ASR 9000 Series and Cisco IOS-XR product family at Cisco. He is an expert and advisor in many technology areas, including IP routing, WAN, WAN switching, MPLS, multicast, BNG, ISDN, VoIP, Carrier Ethernet, System Architecture, network design and many others. He has more than 20 years of industry experience in carrier Ethernet, carrier routing, and network access technologies. Xander  holds a dual CCIE certification (number 6775) in service provider and voice technologies. He has a master of science degree in electrical engineering from Hogeschool van University in Amsterdam.

Remember to use the rating system to let Xander know if you have received an adequate response.

Xander might not be able to answer each question because of the volume expected during this event. Remember that you can continue the conversation on the Service Providers community XR OS And Platforms  shortly after the event. This event lasts through Friday, May 24, 2013. Visit this forum often to view responses to your questions and the questions of other Cisco Support Community members.

Webcast  related links:

• Slides
• Webcast  Video Recording
• FAQ

[ivan.cavar]

Ok, thank you. When can we expect 5.1. version?

And one more question, input shaping on 9000v satelites ports isn't implement yet... when can we expect that feature?

Regards,

Ivan

[xthuijs]

hi ivan: XR51 is schedule for 2nd half of this year, say fall (september/oct time frame).

Input shaping, or any feature for that matter on satellite is done by the 9k host. So you're bound to the capability of the LC that your SAT is conencting to. Since we only have 1 TM (traffic manager) for ingress which is limited to 30G, cards that have more then 30G of interfaces per typhoon have their ingress TM disabled for speed purposes.

So the 24x10 will have ingress shaping capabilities, but the 36x10 has it disabled.

cheers!

xander

[ciscomoderator]

Hello Xander,

Excellent work in the live event. Here are some questions that were not answered during the webcast:

1. Is there a Cisco lab available for ASR 9000
2. How will MOD160 perform with multiple 9000NVS?
3. Is there a shortcut for a Bundle-EthernetX interface, such as port-channel interface (poX), in Cisco IOS® ?
4. What is the revolutions per minute (RPM) on these hard disk drives (HDDs) compared to the solid state drives (SDDs)? Will the spinning drives be slow?

Thank you for answering these questions.

- Cisco Support Community Moderator

[xthuijs]

1. Is there a Cisco lab available for ASR 9000

we have "XR4U" stations coming available soon when XR 511 comes alive. The plan is for a downloadable play image like that. In the interim we have 2 demo systems available, and they can be booked via your account manager representative.

1. How will MOD160 perform with multiple 9000NVS?

very well. the mod 160 has 4 NPU's, 2 per bay. So if you have a 4x10 MPA to serve a satellite, you effectively have a single NPU per 20 1Gigs from the satellite. The pps performance will be stellar. However it might be price technically more ideal to connect satellite with a 36x10. Since the MOD-x has native MPA's with 1G also.

     2. Is there a shortcut for a Bundle-EthernetX interface, such as port-channel interface (poX), in Cisco IOS® ?.

usability enhancement is there, we are trying to push this into a new reasonable release. follow CSCuh04526

     3. What  is the revolutions per minute (RPM) on these hard disk drives (HDDs)  compared to the solid state drives (SDDs)? Will the spinning drives be  slow?

depends on the type we had avaialble at time of production, you will see different sizes and disks on the RSP2. the rpm of the HD is not so much an issue as much as the buffered writing we used to do in XR. This is fixed up with XR43 where the disk writing performance is much better. the HD/SDD is used for logging storage only (and maybe your pictures) but other then that we're not that concerned with write perf of the HD.

regards

xander

[ciscomoderator]

Xander,

Thanks a lot for the responses. here are few more questions from the live event:

1. Will 100G ITU Grid support for the ASR 9000 Series platform be available soon?
2. Is there a reason why optic licenses for G709 are per line card type instead of just simply per slot?

Thanks a lot,

Cisco Moderator

[xthuijs]

Answer 1 is that it depends on the availability of the optics, 100G is a fairly new standard and there are not that many (cost effective) options out there, so when they do, we will qualify them and get them supported.

Answer 2 I am not sure what the difference is between slot and linecard, but we had decided to make this optic license per linecard/slot as that fits the "pay for what you use" model the licensing tried to provide. If you have a set of interfaces that require the (E)FEC, then you only need a license for those cards on which those interfaces reside.

regards!

xander

[ciscomoderator]

And few others:

1. Is there a limitation on the number of maximum DWDM-XFP-C that can be used in Typhoon cards?
2. Will there be any tunable DWDM SFP+ for ASR 9000 Series
3. Will 100G ITU Grid support for the ASR 9000 Series platform be available soon?

Thank you for your quick response.

Cisco Moderator

[xthuijs]

Some answers:

1) No, there is no limit, but when we are using the 36x10 or the 24x10, there are some restrictions in which positions you can put higher powered optics that consume more then 1W (eg with ER optics same deal). This because of the cooling characteristics of the chassis.

We ahve a new fan tray out now, called the -v2, that eliminates this restriction of the slot positions.

What it comes down to is that on teh 24x10 you can only put high powered optics in the lower 12 positions and for the 36x10 in the lower 12 also.

2) Yes they are available today

3) see above/earlier question.

cheers!

xander

[AARON WEINTRAUB]

On the question above about licenses:

1. 
   Is there a reason why optic licenses for G709 are per line card type instead of just simply per slot

I think the question is 'why are there 24x, 36x, MOD80, ADV, all different kinds of optics licenses' instead of just 'enable G709 features on slot 1'.

[xthuijs]

Aah right thanks for that clarification Aaron!

I just got word from our marketing team on this, the rationale behind the different lics per card was to maintain a fair pricing per port.

That is why there are different lics per linecard (density).

regards

xander