Re: Are SW upgrades needed in MPLS core networks?

[Richard A Steenbergen <ras () e-gerbil net>]

On Fri, Feb 06, 2004 at 04:39:09PM -0200, Rubens Kuhl Jr. wrote:
> > > > > Even hardware with good IPv6 performance seems to forward at half
> the
> > > rate
> > > > > of IPv4/MPLS packets;
> > > >
> > > > we call that crappy hardware
> > >
> > > Based on such point of view, non-crappy hardware would be: (blank) and
> > > crappy hardware would be (blank), could you fill the blanks ?
> >
> > As with so many other situations, the blanks can be filled in with
> > "Juniper" and "Cisco", in that order.
>
> I don't get why Juniper and Cisco trie-lookup forwarding would differ in
> comparing IPv4 and IPv6; Juniper does a 8+1+1+1+1+... search until a leaf
> node is found, while Cisco does 16+8+8 (or something near it but still with
> 3 phases); for both architetures, IPv6 longer addresses implies walking more
> deeply into the tree in order to find where to route.

Uhh...... One trie lookup is fully supported in ASIC, the other is not.

> Just to be sure, my point here is not where the effective IPv6 performance
> suits one needs or not, but wether a router that can forward <amount> Mpps
> of IPv4/MPLS packets can also forward the same amount of IPv6 packets per
> second.

Personally I'd say the routing protocol functionality and stability is as
important if not more important. I don't see the point in implementing a
v6 network consisting of seperate 7206vxrs (to contain the ios crashes)  
and tunnels, if you're going to bother with it at least do it native and
do it right.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras () e-gerbil net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
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