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Engineer internet surveillance & privacy

classy chassis

I mentioned in my post re lobbying and the Digital Economy Act (DEAct) that he internet was a boring nuts and bolts game without the sexiness of the music industry.

Well coincidentally I have just taken delivery of some new kit – we are continually updating our network. The picture below tells it all.  The box, known as a 7606 chassis, is what we plug in the routers and line cards that run our connections to the internet.

It might look boring but engineers can get really excited about these things – at least at what is going into the box. The 7606 chassis itself is just a series of slots – just like you have in the back of a PC. The difference here is that what gets put into a slot is several orders of magnitude more powerful that what you would buy from PC World. The Cisco 10Gbps line cards and supervisory engines cost tens of thousands of pounds each – and each 7606 takes six of them.

The chassis also has dual power supplies (boring – even for an engineer but necessary for reliability). In fact we don’t just buy one of these boxes – everything is x 2 for ultra reliability doubling the investment needs.

Whilst this ends up taking the cost well into six figures what you end up with is a router that can process tens of Gigabits per second of data.  This may sound a lot compared to your average ADSL connection but can be quickly consumed if you are dealing with businesses that might want a couple of Gbps just for their own use.

If I remember I’ll take some photos when the chasses are installed and populated.

Trefor Davies and new toy - Cisco 7606 chassis
Trefor Davies and Cisco 7606 chassis

4 replies on “classy chassis”

If you don’t remember to supply some eye candy / cable porn within the next week or two I’ll send you a reminder. I remember various commo toys from ages ago (Rolm CBX, NCR Comten FPU, Bunker Ramo PCU, Cisco 5000-series, etc.). You might want to get the following for your next costume party : robe, sandals, shepherd’s crook, and an ID badge for “Noah”.

I went looking for the Cisco 7606 at their website. A link to the datasheet page is below. It looks like you’re going to need at least three modules (sup., display [/ storage ?], and line) per chassis before you can get some use out of it. Please include a shot or two of the GBICs (if needed) in your upcoming 7606 gallery. Thx.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/routers/ps368/ps371/product_data_sheet09186a0080088773_ps368_Products_Data_Sheet.html

P.S. I think this is worse than those catsup ads where it doesn’t want to leave the bottle.

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