Re: 7206 VXR NPE-G1 throughput

[Olivier Benghozi <olivier.benghozi () wifirst fr>]

Cisco once implemented and released this feature to use the second core of the NPE-G1, most notably to manage the BRAS 
& en/decapsulations tasks for LAC/LNS/PTA (PPPoE, L2TP...), effectively offering such 1.6 factor.
It was called MPF, and was released in special 12.3-YM IOS (in 2004/2005 I guess).
The first core was still running "normal" IOS while the second core was running a dedicated microcode (acting as some 
sort of data plane).

However several features were not available, and it was quite buggy and unstable (unless you only used the very minimum 
features implemented in the MPF microcode: no MSS adjust, no ACL for PPP sessions...).
It was quickly deprecated anyway.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/routers/ps341/prod_end-of-life_notice0900aecd8067dd9f.html


Le 10 févr. 2014 à 21:38, Mark Tinka <mark.tinka () seacom mu> a écrit :

> On Monday, February 10, 2014 07:58:16 PM Nick Hilliard 
> wrote:
>
> > in fact, the npe-g1 uses a BCM1250 which is a dual CPU
> > unit but vanilla IOS is not able to use the second CPU
> > for packet forwarding.  Unsubstantiated rumour claimed
> > that modular IOS (QNX kernel) could push about 1.6x the
> > throughput of vanilla IOS, as it was smp capable.  Pity
> > it was never released.
>
> Haha, you remind me of PXF (although that was the NSE-100 
> and NSE-150).
>
> Mark.