I have the opporunity to acquire one of these beasts, and I am just wondering if it is worth it. My lab is comprised of mostly 2500/2600 routers and 2900 switches. If I can get a good deal on it should I pick it up?
He says it includes a AC power supply and a RSP2, and that he could possibly add a VIP2-20 card that would allow me to add 2 PA cards. So it sounds like it would be useful for setting up a lab then, at least for doing frame relay and what not. From the sounds of it, what do you think it is worth?
It will be great for learning things on, but not so great for any production as the rsp2 and vip2 are slow. We sold a 7507 chassis + 1ps + an rsp4 with no VIP/PAs for like ~$800 to a liquidator couple months ago.
brockj, keep in mind that the 7507s are built like a tank, big, loud, generate a lot of heat, and use a lot of juice. They are great boxes and would make a good learning tool if equipped with the right interfaces, but they're not the most convenient box for your home lab.
3640 has more network module slots (4) opposed to 2. The 3620 didn't sell very well at all and was rather worthless due to only 2 slots. There may be flash/memory differences as well but you can get that for cheap.
The big advantage is having 6-8 serial ports to emulate a frame-relay switch. Routing protocols act differently depending on the kind of medium they are running on. It helps to see and understand what happens.
3640 can have 128MB RAM, 3620 tops at 64MB - if you tried to do a full BGP routing table times two peers, back in the day, you could do it with a 3640, but not with a 20.
For lab use, the main advantage to the 20s are that they're dirt cheap.
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