ASR9K as enterprise edge router.

[Hosam Badreldin]

We are looking into moving from out 7200 to ASR9K as our edge router. I have few doubts about this platform.

1- Does the ASR9K support NATing natively?  (Cisco IOS XR IP/MPLS Core Software 3DES)

2- Does it support NBAR or any other replacement service to stop P2P and do inspection?

3- QoS is also done on the edge, we do some rate-limiting and shaping, does it support UBRL (user-baed rate-limiting)?

Finally, would you use it to replace your 7200VXR router?

I value your comments and questions.

Thank you,

HB

[Nagendra Kumar Nainar]

Hi,

1- Does the ASR9K support NATing natively?  (Cisco IOS XR IP/MPLS Core Software 3DES)

- Yes. It supports CGN (NAT44, NAT64 etc) with ISM module.

2- Does it support NBAR or any other replacement service to stop P2P and do inspection?

- I beleive NBAR is yet to be supported on ASR9K.

3- QoS is also done on the edge, we do some rate-limiting and shaping, does it support UBRL (user-baed rate-limiting)?

- I will let others to comments on it.

Finally, would you use it to replace your 7200VXR router?

- It depends on multiple factors and your requirement. 7200 is CPU based forwarding platform with limited hardwre off loading (like VPN encryption). So it comes up with its own limitation in terms of process/features enabled and throughput. ASR9K is a one of the best fit for edge node platform positioning. Edge node is known for loading with lot of features with expectation on traffic througput. So if your requirement justifies, you can go for ASR9k.

Thanks,

Nagendra

[Hosam Badreldin]

Thank you very much Nagendra. I appreciate your valuable comments.

I will keep reading about QoS, since I have heard that the ASR9K does a lot of it's QoS in hardware so I expected something like UBRL to be available in such platform.

-HB