ASR9000 Rate Limited RSP880

[DanilZhig]

Hello everyone,

I am struggling to find information about Rate Limited versions of RSP880 and A9K-MOD200 line cards. Their part numbers are A9K-RSP880-RL-TR and A9K-MOD200RL-TR-B. There is just no information about them in the internen and in open documentation. What I would like to know is if there is anything to consider about this cards apart from the fact that they are rate limited and provide half of the normal bandwidth. These cards are chaper than their non RL counterparts and they are good for Pay As You Grow Approach.

There is also one mistery about A9K-MOD200RL-TR-B. It can't be chosen in CCW during router configuration (we tried 2 routers - ASR9904 and ASR9006), but can only be found as a spare part. Is this card availabe for any systems at all?

Thanks for replies in advance.

Best regards,

Danil

[smailmilak]

Hi Aleksandar,

are you sure that the RL PN has less CPU power, SFP ports and SSD disk space?

If yes, then I got it all wrong because I saw on CCW that the rate limit can be lifted with a license.

We have a couple of A9K-RSP880-RL-SE and under show platform and show inventory it's listed as A9K-RSP880-SE.

NAME: "module 0/RSP0/CPU0", DESCR: "ASR9K Route Switch Processor with 880G/slot Fabric and 32GB" PID: A9K-RSP880-SE

On CCW it's possible to acquire this license: A9K-RSP880SE-RL-U - A9K RSP880 Service Edge Upgrade License to 880G/Slot. 

It's the same with -TR PN.

@DanilZhig

It's not a big deal if you can not find the A9K-MOD200RL-TR-B LC when configuring an A9K chassis.

You can order the part as spare. No issues there.

I remember that it was possible to configure it with A9K 9006. I think that it was possible around 6 months ago.

[Aleksandar Vidakovic]

hi Smail,

RSP880-RL actually has more disk space, not less. :) The SW imposed rate-limit is on the switching fabric capacity per slot (nothing to do with the CPU). With a license you can unlock the 880Gbps/slot.

/Aleksandar

[smailmilak]

Ok, so the HW is different (different CPU, less SFP ports and larger disk space)?

With the license A9K-RSP880SE-RL-U we can lift the rate-limit but we will still not get the same performance like it's on RSP880-SE (no -RL)?

[Aleksandar Vidakovic]

Correct. Once the license is applied, the switch fabric throughput will be exactly the same as in non-RL. The CPU performance will be different, due to less CPU cores.

[smailmilak]

The thing is that our RSP's (we have ordered  A9K-RSP880-RL-SE on CCW)

has 1.9 GHz

cisco ASR9K Series (Intel 686 F6M14S4) processor with 33554432K bytes of memory.
Intel 686 F6M14S4 processor at 1907MHz, Revision 2.174

and this SSD:

6220M bytes of hard disk.
25012208k bytes of disk0: (Sector size 512 bytes).
25012208k bytes of disk1: (Sector size 512 bytes).

and there are four SFP+ ports on the front (I have a picture of it).

That is the reason why I got so confused...

[Aleksandar Vidakovic]

wow, I stand corrected. It appears our internal documentation is not correct. :( Thanks for correcting me! ;)

[smailmilak]

Yeah, I got worried after I have read your fist reply because I told the customer that it's only a software limit, HW is the same. PN under show platform does not say that it's a different RSP.

What is the command for license activation? 

e.g. For additional 20G on A9K-4T16GE-TR it's this one:

"hw-module port-control license location 0/5/CPU0" 

I have these options:

(config)#hw-module ?
all all line cards
fia-intf-policer FIA interface rate-limiter on 7-Fabric LC
fia-vqi-shaper Enhance VQI shaper limit for Skytrain
location Configure line card location
mac-move Configure mac-move behavior
optimized-fabric-mcast Configure optimized fabric multicast
port-control Conifugre port-control of linecard
service Configure service role.
subslot Configure subslot h/w module

[Aleksandar Vidakovic]

The unlocking of the full 880Gbps per slot on A9K-RSP880SE-RL-U, you have to activate the A9K-RSP880SE-RL-U license. There's an equivalent license for -TR.

[smailmilak]

Ok, great.

In the case of A9K-4T16GE-TR, it's necessary to activate the license, then apply the hw-module port-control command and after all that reload of the LC.

[Aleksandar Vidakovic]

A9K-RSP880SE-RL-U is a chassis license, no additional command should be required.

[Aleksandar Vidakovic · Accepted solution]

hi Smail,

ok, I did some more attentive reading on this topic. I have mixed up RSP880-Lite with RSP880-RL.

RSP880-Lite is the one with less CPU cores, less SFP+ ports and more SSD space.

RSP880-RL is totally identical to its non-RL counterpart. You can unleash the full switch fabric capacity with a SW license.

Sorry for the confusion and thanks again for correcting me! :)

/Aleksandar

[DanilZhig]

Hello Aleksandar and smailmilak,

Thanks for this discussion here. Answered a lot of questions of mine.