On Tue, 8 Aug 2006, Gunther Stammwitz wrote: > >> If you're familiar with Cisco 6500/7600 boxes, the MLX is to >> the SUP720-3B as the XMR is to the SUP720-3BXL (except on the >> Foundrys there is no PFC, and every card has an integrated >> DFC which isn't upgradable :P). That means roughly 256k v4 >> routes on the MLX, and 1M v4 routes on the XMR, give or take >> depending on what other things you try to do with the boxes >> (v6, mpls, etc). >> > > I don't agree. > > The MLX can handle up to 512K IPV4 Routes in hardware (=the FIB) and the > total size of possible BGP4 IPV4-routes in the RIB is 2 millions. This means > you can have up to four full views with 512k routes each. > > The foundry box is much more powerful than the Cisco gear you mentioned and > cannot be compared since forwarding is done in hardware on the line cards > and not via software like the 7600 does.
I can't comment on the rest of this comment, but I know the Cisco 7600 can do hardware forwarding. If Distributed Forwarding (daughter) Cards (DFC) are installed on the line cards, the line cards can do their own forwarding. And the supervisor can do hardware forwarding, for any line cards without DFC though you are limited by how many pps it can do. There are so many Supervisor variants though, so this might be hard to see on the Cisco website. I think Cisco has overly differientiated the Cisco 6500 series. Calling some of the chassis' 6500s, by a different model series (7600) was the first mistake. > > Below is a comparison between the different foundry boxes one can buy: > > Attributes BigIron RX NetIron MLX NetIron XMR > IPv4 HW Routes 512K 512K 1M > IPv4 BGP Routes 1M/4M 2M 4M > BGP Peers 128 256 500 > L3 VPN Instances N/A 400 2K > VLL/VPLS Instances N/A 4K 16K > Outbound ACL N/A Yes Yes > MAC Addresses 16K 1M 2M > > Gunther Tom
