Apparently a lot of people believe that BGP requires big honking routers. My experience is that this is not so, not at all. I know my company (a reseller), would like people to believe that BGP absolutely requires a super-strong router. But in my experience, I have seen no such requirement. The truth is, you don't need a really great router to do BGP. You may need a good router if you need a lot of packet-forwarding speed, or if you're planning to run lots of 'edge services' like QoS or access-lists. But not for just BGP, even with the full Internet route tables, and even with multiple peers. While obviously more memory is good, the notion that you always need huge amounts of memory for BGP is mostly overblown.
Don't believe it? Consider this http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/459/41.shtml In a multi-homed environment, having a BGP table of 98400 entries consumed only 71MB (or 77MB total). And as far as the notion of can you or can you not reasonably run BGP on a 2600 or less, consider this quote from Cisco ISP Essentials, page 258 "...A common misperception in the Internet community is that substantial routers are required before BGP can be run - many engineers forget that several ISP backbones have been built out of nothing more than Cisco 2500 routers that have limited RAM and CPU capaiblities. Indeed the 2500 shares many features with its predecessor, the IGS, which was used in many ISP backbones in the early 1990's..." ""Leigh Anne Chisholm"" wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... > Actually, I am talking about full routes from two providers... > > I'm just wanting to verify my knowledge (which is typically based on what > I've seen here previously). > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "John Neiberger" > To: ; > Sent: Friday, June 07, 2002 1:53 PM > Subject: Re: Hardware requirements for actual BGP implementation [7:46053] > > > > If you aren't taking full routes from two providers, I believe that a > > 2650 with 128MB would be fine. A 2620 or lower would not be the > > greatest choice. If you want to take full routes from two or more > > providers, you will need at least 256MB of DRAM which forces you to pick > > a different platform, like a 3600 or 7200, or perhaps even one of the > > new 3700 routers. Can they take 256MB? > > > > > > >>> "Leigh Anne Chisholm" 6/7/02 1:36:10 PM >>> > > I'm giving a BGP presentation next week and I just want to update > > myself on > > some items... > > > > Last I recall, the minimum amount of memory required to run BGP is 128 > > MB > > however 256 MB is recommended. Is this information still correct? > > > > Can a 2600 run BGP? Not that you'd want to see that, but is anyone > > doing > > it? What's the minimum Cisco platform recommended for running an > > actual BGP > > implementation? > > > > Thanks in advance... Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=46087&t=46087 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
