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CISCO 3640 or 4000 router?

Hello, I just started working at a muni-ISP that is using a Linux box as thier router because their CISCO 3640 croaks too often. They (the City) does not want to buy a new router because of cost, but they would like to use a CISCO router. So, after looking around online (my CISCO classes were only with 2500 series and 1700 series routers) I found some CISCO 4000's and CISCO 3640's on the Internet. The 3640's cost a lot more than the 4000's so there must be some major difference between the two. Only thing I can see is that the 3640's can handle more DRAM than the 4000s.

What do we need the router to do? Well, we have a T1 line and a 3Mbps Microwave line (Will soon be upgraded to 8Mbps). Both backbones are routed with BGP. The T1 has over 106000 learned routes on the 3640, so I assume having a fair share of memory is a good thing (Current route space used is 17MB).

Any help would be helpful.

-SB

Reply to
darktiger
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Personally I strongly recommend the 3640 and here is why.

4000 EOF End of life (yes the 3640 will be end of life soon also but not yet.) Expandability / Upgrades ---- the 3640 has room for 4 slots whereas the 4000 has 3 slots.

Both are reliable but Im almost willing to bet the 3640 has a better MTBF and will certainly be easier to get back up

IOS!!! The latest IOS is supported on the 3640's 12.4 where as cisco has stopped making anything past 12.2 for 4000.

Performance! A maxed 3640 beats a 4000 any day. The cisco website can shed more light on that.

Now if you dont need those features by all means get the 4000. No I don't work for cisco!

Reply to
Mr Cisco Man

My opinion too heads toward a 3640. We replaced a lot of 4xxx routers in our network(4000,4500 and 4700) with 3640 and 3660 series, also the "other side" of the line, usually cisco 25xx, were replaced with 26xx, which is in most cases compatible with the 36xx modules. The network i=B4m talking about is a 200+(routers) network, including layer3 switches and approx. 2500 hosts, also SNA/DLSW+/Ethernet and TokenRing, the routing protocol is ospf. We had problems with massive cpu-load when working with access-lists and flapping routes, which was fixed after the network-wide replacement of the old systems(10 years or so?). In our case, the reliability of these routers is excellent, except of a defect NM-4T(... shit happens!) and an "automatically" :-) rebooting

2612 at various times every day all are working fine, uptime is at some routers since power-on 4 years ago.
Reply to
masterbit

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