Redundant BGP for lower cost

[jlewis at lewis.org (Jon Lewis)]

On Thu, 4 Mar 2010, Alex Thurlow wrote:

> 2. Buy a Cisco/Juniper/whatever and then have the Quagga box as backup.
> 3. I have a 6500 behind the router that's just doing switching.  Could I have 
> something switch that to static route all traffic to one of my providers if 
> something happened to the router?  The 6500 has Sup1A with MSFC2 running IOS 
> native.
>
> On the Cisco side, I see that we could probably run a 7200VXR with NPE-G1 
> (about $6000 on ebay).  Moving to the Sup720, even used is probably out of 
> our price range.

If you were to upgrade the 6500 to a Sup720-3bxl or better, it would be a 
far superior platform for handling multiple gigabit ethernet circuits and 
full BGP than the NPE-G1.  Sadly, the sup720 and required power supply and 
fan card upgrades would cost more than that 7200/NPE-G1, but it'll route 
considerably more traffic.  I don't think you're going to get line-rate 
GigE from the G1.  You will with the 6500.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Jon Lewis                   |  I route
  Senior Network Engineer     |  therefore you are
  Atlantic Net                |
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