People,

As ISP we're currently using 7204VXR as PE and for our new network 7304 have been offered and installed.

A shift from RFC1483 to PPPoATM (including MLP) has required us to abandon the 7304 which will not propperly support PPPoAAA eventhough the IOS supports it Cisco won't, or as we believe not to our satisfaction.

So we have to choose between a load of trusty 7304VXRs or 10008s. The question is I'd like to do marking of MPLS EXP bit based on DSCP instead of the default: IP precedence. One of my colleagues is afraid of his PE devices due to the possible performance hit of non-default DSCP to MPLS EXP mapping. Now I've recently picked up some information about MGX8500 being quite good at QoS, out performing a 7300. So I'm curious if anyone has experience with either platform and (non default MPLS) QoS and the performance hit to expect.

Another question is about the processing of non-default QoS mappings. Does non-default mean that packets are suddenly process switched or can hardware do DSCP to MPLS as well as it can do standard prec to MPLS EXP? Are there differences between the various platforms? We actually still have some MGX's available so if the motivation is right we could use those.

As the price difference between the 7200 and the 10k is substantial I need solid information to support a choice either way.

Nearly forgot: Both (7200 and 7300) equipped with NPE-G1(00) same card for both platforms. Plus STM1 line cards. The STM4 for the 10k only comes in a 4 port version which is a bit too expensive as of yet...

TIA,