Adrian Chadd writes [on Cisco's TCAM-based 7600/Cat6500 routers]: > Its a great sale; they suddenly have hard limits which "the internet > exceeds", forcing the hardware upgrade cycle. Remember how long the > Cisco 75xx persisted and note how many people are still running > Cisco 720x's with NPE-225's or NPE-400's w/ full tables simply by > adding RAM.
"Simply adding RAM" may not be that easy/cheap, especially when you have to upgrade it on many linecards (VIP2s anyone?). On distributed platforms with hardware forwarding in the linecards (GSR) this is/was probably even worse, you have these "hard limits" in the linecards. Replacing centralized switching engines from time to time doesn't seem such a bad value proposition compared to replacing/memory-upgrading line cards. -- Simon. (Who doesn't care much because we're running at ~30'000 IPv4 routes.)
