Cisco 2611 Real-Life Speed?

[MysticLlama]

This should be a simple question for one of the Cisco guys.

I can't find any specs beyond the fact that my two interfaces are 10BT.

I just want to know what this this will actually push with only one routing rule in place. All it does it route traffic from a 192.0.0.xxx network to a new 10.0.0.xxx network.

Will I get close to the 10BT max of the interfaces, or is real-life going to be lower than that?

I just need to use this thing as a crutch for a few days while I migrate numbers over, but I need to figure something else out if it's going to only be able to actually push 4-5mb/s

Anyone know for sure?

 

[Garion]

Cisco 26xx's are pretty good little routers. They can push a lot of data. A 2611 is rated for about 13,000 PPS. Waay more power than you need to run a 10Mb/s link at full speed. Keep in mind that you're probably talking about 10Mb/s, half duplex. If you get more than 6Mb/s across the physical wire, I'd be surprised. If you can find a switch that will run 10Mb/s FULL duplex, you could set it up that way. That will get you more throughput than half duplex, but still not enough to max out the router.

- G

 

[MysticLlama]

Well, the network is already 10/100 Switched, and most of the hosts are 100BT.

There is plenty of traffic running around to saturate the link, I just want to be careful that I don't choke it too much.

I'll be moving some of the big services to the new address range ASAP, i.e. the fileserver, main database server, etc. but there are a lot of printers that run all the time, and some other oddball boxes that are going to take a couple of days to go through.

The router will probably be seeing a lot of traffic, so I just wanted to make sure I was going to get a fair amount of speed through it.

I have about 70 nodes to move over, and with DHCP and the inital server moves I can get about 50 of them in one swoop, I just don't want to make the other 20 devices too starved for bandwidth if I can help it.

 

[cmetz]

Garion, I have had a lot of bad experiences with 2600 series Ethernet (not FastEthernet) adapters and full duplex. As far as I have seen, anything but half duplex is asking for problems.

MysticLlama, a PC running OpenBSD or Linux will give you more performance for cheaper. 2600s aren't really designed for Ethernet-to-Ethernet routing, they're more for WAN routing (Ethernet-to-T1 for example).

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: cmetz
Garion, I have had a lot of bad experiences with 2600 series Ethernet (not FastEthernet) adapters and full duplex. As far as I have seen, anything but half duplex is asking for problems.

MysticLlama, a PC running OpenBSD or Linux will give you more performance for cheaper. 2600s aren't really designed for Ethernet-to-Ethernet routing, they're more for WAN routing (Ethernet-to-T1 for example).

once again cmetz is right on the money.

 

[MysticLlama]

Yeah, I knew it was more of a WAN based router, that's why I figured I'd ask.

I'll just throw up a Win2k Server box with routing on it to get by. I dont' know how to do it on Linux off the top of my head without some learning and fiddling, and I'll only need it for a couple of days. Even if it doesn't perform quite as well, it should be fine for what I need it for.

Thanks for the help, I'm glad I didn't choke people out too bad.

 

[xyyz]

do they sell a fastethernet adapter for the 2611? i'm using one of these at home infront of an OpenBSD firewall. nice mention about the duplex mismatch. while the cross-over should allow for auto-negotiation on the OpenBSD box, i'll still change the external interface settings manually.

 

[cmetz]

xyyz, there is a FastEthernet NM that could physically fit into the 2611 but Cisco says it is not supported and I don't have one to try to see if it actually works or not. The 2620 and I believe the 2610XM both have FastEthernet built-in.

The old Cisco Ethernet (not FastEthernet or GigabitEthernet) interfaces do not support N-Way auto-negotiation and often they don't seem to negotiate right with N-Way devices. So it is a very good idea to force the other side to 10-Half, which will prevent the problem.

 

[Saltin]

I can tell you guys from experience, that NM-2fe2w does not work in the 2611 or 2611XM.

NM4E does, but it's all 10mb.