2611 routing performance

That's a hard question to answer. Here is a table I have been working on to at least compare Cisco routers by "pps":

I can tell you that I used to run a 3620 on a 10Mbps full-duplex connection with ACLs, etc and it had a hard time keeping up. I would see the processor spike when traffic approached 8Mbps...

Regards, Steve

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top-posted :-( : That's a hard question to answer. Here is a table I have been working :on to at least compare Cisco routers by "pps":

:

More completely,

: I can tell you that I used to run a 3620 on a 10Mbps full-duplex :connection with ACLs, etc and it had a hard time keeping up. I would see :the processor spike when traffic approached 8Mbps...

The lower end of the 3620 rating is 10 Mbps (20K pps @ 64 byte packets) for CEF. Any traffic that had to be processed outside of CEF would lower this rating greatly: the fast-switching performance rating for the

3620 is only 2000 pps (1.024 Mbps).

Fast switching: 1500 pps (768 Kbps) CEF: 15000 pps (7.68 Mbps)

These are based upon 64 byte packets, so if you had lots of nice long packets that were very easily CEF routed, you could fill a 10 megabit pipe one way... but the variation is sufficiently great that you shouldn't count on it.

*If* for some reason you could not use CEF, or wished to do worst-case provisioning, then the smallest of the routers in that table that would meet full duplex @ 10 Mbps, would be the 10720 (25.6 Mbps); the next would be the 7200-NPE-G1 (40.448 Mbps).

If you -can- use CEF, then allowing some slop for processor intervention for unusual cases, you could look at:

1801-1812 or 1841 (35.84 / 38.40), 2691 (35.84) 3640/3540A (25.6) 3631 (25.6) 4700 (38.40) 7500-VIP*

If, though, your routing needs are not overly complex and do not include NAT (or you are willing to toss in a firewall), then consider a Cat3550 or Cat3750 "multilayer switch". Those handle gigabits/s easily.. but they don't do NAT, and they don't do any interface that can't be brought in as a GBIC or SFP.