Almost a year ago, Cisco released a huge marketing blitz titled the "Data Center Big Bang". I commented at the time that this was a big YYYYYAAAAAWWWWNNNNN. Lots of hype, not much substance.
Last week's Cisco ISR G2 routers release didn't strike me as a huge marketing blitz; I actually felt the marketing was rather average this time. No huge announcements, webinars, e-mail assaults, or predictions of world peace with this new Cisco product. Just a standard product rollout with appropriate marketing.
And, based on the new ISR G2 routers, that seems about right. I don't see anything revolutionary about the ISR G2s. Essentially, take ISRs, make packets go faster. Brad Reese had a good graphic showing the differences between the legacy ISRs and the new G2s:
Nothing in there that makes me want to buy three for the lab just to see the blinky lights.
Cisco has done this before. Remember the 3700-series routers? A little trip down memory lane would be appropriate. The Cisco 2500-series - in all its amazing fixed configuration options - was the powerhouse of branch routing. What did Cisco sell, about a billion of those things? In desperate need of a product line refresh, Cisco released the very impressive 2600/3600-series routers which quickly started replacing the fixed configuration 2500 series.
The 2600/3600-series were very good routers and quickly spread into enterprise networks. I did most of my CCIE lab prep on those routers.
Then, around 2003, Cisco decided the 3600 series wasn't good enough anymore and came out with the 3700 series. The 3700-series was a nice speed upgrade, but nothing revolutionary. Like going from Windows 95 (3600-series) to Windows 98 (3700-series) before Windows 2000 (ISRs) came out. And the funniest thing about the 3700s was they only lasted a year, maybe 18 months. When the ISRs were released in 2004, everyone moved to the ISRs, skipping over the 3700 series. The original ISRs did have some really good, new technology that justified an upgrade. Not so much with the G2s.
So, that gets me to my point. What's the big need to upgrade to G2s? I'm not running out and buying any. Furthermore, will there be a new router line in the next 12-18 months with some real new technology that will quickly obsolete the G2s? Is it worth the engineering time to research, test, architect, and validate the G2s to be included in standard templates?
I need to see something more. Maybe I'm missing something.
?
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Michael Morris is a communications engineering manager at a $3-billion high-tech company. His background is in enterprise WANs working with telcos and developing large-scale routing designs. He has worked on networks at government and corporate organizations, including networks at two Fortune 10 companies. In his current role, he leads a team of 10 engineers responsible for large-scale IT networking projects and architectural standards for data networks, storage area networks, IP telephony, contact centers, and security. Michael is CCIE #11733 and recently became one of the first three Cisco Certified Design Experts (CCDE) ever (#20080002). He has 11 years experience in networking and communications, including four years as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army. He has a bachelor's degree in MIS from the University at Buffalo and is working on his MBA from NC State University. In 2008, he was awarded the Network Professional Association (NPA) Professional Excellence and Innovation Award for his work on network architecture, templates and enterprise MPLS design.
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Yes and No
While I agree it isn't that much of a change there are some significant pieces.
1. Universal images: To enable features with a license and not have to reload is tremendous. When everyone talks of uptime this piece is just huge.
2. Throughput: The throughput numbers are a significant upgrade from the previous models
3. memory: BGP requires more memory every day, and this delivers that
4. DSP upgrades: Sorely needed and delivered
Could something new come out soon, sure. Am I expecting it, no. The ASRs are great replacements for the 7200/7500 and up too the 10k. The ISRs were long in the tooth and needed an upgrade. Is it as big as I wanted, not really, would I buy another 3800, not anymore. Would I rush out to upgrade, not unless we needed the features and functions of the new platform, but then again isn't that always the case.
Resale value of Cisco ISR G2s
With Cisco's new software license keys, what will happen to the resale value of Cisco ISR G2s?
Cisco appears to be validating the business model of open source networking vendor - Vyatta!
Sincerely,
Brad Reese on Cisco
Network World Cisco Subnet
BradReese.Com Cisco Refurbished
Some things I don't understand
* 1941 needs 2Us in the rack (and looks ugly)
* wheres the 1911/12?
* IOS 15? Whos going to deply this within the next two years till its stable?
ISR G2
Compare the CPUs used in the 39xx with what they used to ship at the top end. Big difference which belies some of the innovation.
Nothing new
Well, as expected, another Network World article that obviously hasn't been research or maybe the authors incapable to investigate and would rather just bash Cisco. Surprised this article wasn't written by Brad Reese.
Anyways, We just had a presentation yesterday from an Cisco SE.
Key points for us.
The options of a 2960 layer 2 or 3650 layer 3 switch on a card, we're talking true l3 routing on a port, and up to 96 ports in the switch. Yeah, that's exciting for us
The AXP/Services module running 2x500 GB drives with 4 GB of memory, now we can look to virtualize/vm our few branch level servers and have them sit directly on the router. Green technology and it saves us money for cooling/power/backups as we can just copy the VM.
Investment protection as we can re-use existing ISR modules for the new platform.
Single OS to manage across all the platforms, my staff are already trained on IOS so no learning curve, voice services and video conferencing hooks are already in the box.
Exciting news. But, I'm not likely to swap out all of my existing 500 nodes of ISR G1, but we will pick up 5 of these new boxes for tests at certain branches.
Good job Cisco. ASR, then ISR G2, how we'll see some new ASA appliances coming soon too.
We chose to skip on the AXP.
We chose to skip on the AXP. We just have 1U virtualized servers separate from the router.
You get far more horsepower for the money.
AXP/service module
On the AXP/Services module (running 2x500 GB drives with 4 GB of memory) it' s possible to install VMware vSphere ?
modules reuse
not all old modules are supported on the new models per the Cisco web page listed below. most of the old WIC's will not be supported on the new ISR's either, they will mainly support HWIC's not WIC's, so look this over closely before moving as you may need to add the cost of new Modules or cards. look at unsupported modules on new ISR's.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/46548?source=NWWNLE_nlt_cisco_2009-10-23
Cisco ISR G2 Module Support
Hi,
This is a better link:
Cisco ISR G2 Module Support
Sincerely,
Brad Reese on Cisco
Network World Cisco Subnet
BradReese.Com Cisco Refurbished
Enabling Affordable Networks
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