ISPs?

[Robert Blayzor]

On Mar 19, 2009, at 1:29 PM, Christian Meutes wrote:
> Ciscos new software platform, the ASR1000, does everything in  
> software. Its
> in theory the perfect edge device, if it would be already bugfree  
> and would
> have all the features and hardware support the others have. I  
> believe it routes
> linerate 10GE, can has ACLs, QoS and all the sophisticated stuff  
> enabled at
> the same time.



I don't think that's true.  I believe the ASR's are very hardware  
assisted by the route processor. (the control plane is completely  
isolated).  I believe the SIP is what actually handles the forwarding  
via hardware.  Also the fact you can do in-service software upgrades  
leads me to believe that router has hardware based forwarding as well.

Line-rate 10GE with all the ACL's/QoS/MPLS/L2TP/encryption, etc. only  
in software would be very difficult to do in software without  
installing a furnace in the rack! ;-)

-- 
Robert Blayzor, BOFH
INOC, LLC
rblayzor at inoc.net
http://www.inoc.net/~rblayzor/