Routers in Data Centers

[rekoil at semihuman.com (Chris Woodfield)]

Historically, you would find that routers designed for long-haul transport (Cisco GSR/CRS, Juniper M-series, etc) generally had deeper buffers per-port and more robust QoS capabilities than datacenter routers that were effectively switches with Layer 3 logic bolted on (*coughMSFCcough*). That line has blurred quite a bit lately, however - Cisco's ES line cards are an example. 

That said, there's plenty of debate as to whether or not these features actually make for a better long-haul router or not - I've seen more metro and national backbones built with Cat6500^H^H^H^H7600s than you'd think.

-C

On Sep 24, 2010, at 3:22 22AM, Venkatesh Sriram wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Can somebody educate me on (or pass some pointers) what differentiates
> a router operating and optimized for data centers versus, say a router
> work in the metro ethernet space? What is it thats required for
> routers operating in data centers? High throughput, what else?
> 
> Thanks, Venkatesh
>