cisco router or wan pci card for DS3 circuit?

[lant]

We have outgrown our multilink t1 circuits and have placed an order for our first DS3 circuit. Now we have to decide whether to use a cisco router with a ds3 interface card in it connect the ds3 to our MT core router or try a wan ds3 pci card directly in the MT routder. I have read everything I can find about ds3 wan cards on the forum. Any suggestions and experience you can shared will be much appreciated![/code]

[believewireless]

You can probably find a used Cisco 3640 with DS-3 interface for less than the price of a PC DS-3 card.

[csickles]

I come accross LMC / SBE T3 cards form time to time…
I will put my nose to the ground and see what I scare up..

Craig

[ubb]

I recently purchased 4 SBE cards directly from SBE. They were good to work with and shipped one of them overnight for me since I was in a bind.

We switched from a Cisco 7200 with a DS3 card over to a Mikrotik box with the SBE DS3 card about 2 months ago. We have had some issues with CRC errors that we haven’t been able to identify yet, but it hasn’t been too bad. For the most part we’re really happy with the setup we have.

Here’s the pluses as I see them:

• Having a Mikrotik terminate my DS3 means that I don’t have to train our techs on another device since the rest of our network is Mikrotik
• The point and click GUI makes things nice for everyone - no command line interfaces to train people on
• Readily available, real-time stats in the GUI are great tools to have

Here’s the minuses as I see them:

• There’s a lack of some stats for the SBE interfaces themselves. For example, you can’t see CRC errors, etc (we have to ask our upstream provider if they see any), you also can’t see how much traffic is going over the interface so we just look at the ethernet interface on the same router.
• In talking with Mikrotik support, it seems that the SBE driver may need some updating since it’s a little old

All in all going this route has been a good thing for us. We’ve standardized all of our sites on Mikrotik so it makes sense to use it for terminating the DS3’s too.

I’d also love to hear from others who use these cards It seems like there just aren’t many people who have them.

[lant]

@believewireless

You can probably find a used Cisco 3640 with DS-3 interface for less than the price of a PC DS-3 card.

Thats what I have heard from several WISP operators. Thanks for the input. One of the reasons I am interested in the PC DS3 card option is because I don’t have much experience in Cisco IOS. I am much for comfortable configuration MT.

[lant]

@csickles

I come accross LMC / SBE T3 cards form time to time…
I will put my nose to the ground and see what I scare up..

Craig

Yes, please let me know if you come across a good deal on a DS3 card that will run well with MT.

[lant]

@ubb

I recently purchased 4 SBE cards directly from SBE. They were good to work with and shipped one of them overnight for me since I was in a bind.

We switched from a Cisco 7200 with a DS3 card over to a Mikrotik box with the SBE DS3 card about 2 months ago. We have had some issues with CRC errors that we haven’t been able to identify yet, but it hasn’t been too bad. For the most part we’re really happy with the setup we have.

Here’s the pluses as I see them:

• Having a Mikrotik terminate my DS3 means that I don’t have to train our techs on another device since the rest of our network is Mikrotik
• The point and click GUI makes things nice for everyone - no command line interfaces to train people on
• Readily available, real-time stats in the GUI are great tools to have

Here’s the minuses as I see them:

• There’s a lack of some stats for the SBE interfaces themselves. For example, you can’t see CRC errors, etc (we have to ask our upstream provider if they see any), you also can’t see how much traffic is going over the interface so we just look at the ethernet interface on the same router.
• In talking with Mikrotik support, it seems that the SBE driver may need some updating since it’s a little old

All in all going this route has been a good thing for us. We’ve standardized all of our sites on Mikrotik so it makes sense to use it for terminating the DS3’s too.

I’d also love to hear from others who use these cards It seems like there just aren’t many people who have them.

Thanks very much for your detailed post. It sound like I will give the SBE card a try. Is there any specific SBE model of DS3 card to choose over another? On SBE’s site I see 2 different DS3 cards listed. Which card models are you using?

[BelWave]

@lant

@ubb

I recently purchased 4 SBE cards directly from SBE. They were good to work with and shipped one of them overnight for me since I was in a bind.

We switched from a Cisco 7200 with a DS3 card over to a Mikrotik box with the SBE DS3 card about 2 months ago. We have had some issues with CRC errors that we haven’t been able to identify yet, but it hasn’t been too bad. For the most part we’re really happy with the setup we have.

Here’s the pluses as I see them:

• Having a Mikrotik terminate my DS3 means that I don’t have to train our techs on another device since the rest of our network is Mikrotik
• The point and click GUI makes things nice for everyone - no command line interfaces to train people on
• Readily available, real-time stats in the GUI are great tools to have

Here’s the minuses as I see them:

• There’s a lack of some stats for the SBE interfaces themselves. For example, you can’t see CRC errors, etc (we have to ask our upstream provider if they see any), you also can’t see how much traffic is going over the interface so we just look at the ethernet interface on the same router.
• In talking with Mikrotik support, it seems that the SBE driver may need some updating since it’s a little old

All in all going this route has been a good thing for us. We’ve standardized all of our sites on Mikrotik so it makes sense to use it for terminating the DS3’s too.

I’d also love to hear from others who use these cards It seems like there just aren’t many people who have them.

Thanks very much for your detailed post. It sound like I will give the SBE card a try. Is there any specific SBE model of DS3 card to choose over another? On SBE’s site I see 2 different DS3 cards listed. Which card models are you using?

Hello,

A few years ago we ran the SBE DS3 cards for quite some time without any trouble. Moving away from our Cisco 72xxVXR w/NPE400 was a little nerve wracking, but we had to do something to improve performance. A MikroTik box with 3GHz CPU was the answer. Latency dropped and overall network performance improved with the MikroTik router.

Today we are running several MT routers as core routers. All of them have multiple GigE interfaces and we have pushed several hundred Mbps through them at times. They have been rock solid and our only complaint has been a piss poor BGP module that currently limits us from taking full tables from multiple upstream providers. Hopefully MikroTik will resolve their BGP issues soon. (and they may already have) When they do there will be little reason to go with any other router solution.

BTW, who are you getting your DS3 from? I bet we can beat their price and provide a better service. Let me know if you are interested.

Best,

Brad

[csickles]

On a completely off topic question..

Belwave can I pilfer a copy of your “Powered by MikroTik” JPG file..

It is realy cool…

[lant]

@BelWave

@lant

@ubb

I recently purchased 4 SBE cards directly from SBE. They were good to work with and shipped one of them overnight for me since I was in a bind.

We switched from a Cisco 7200 with a DS3 card over to a Mikrotik box with the SBE DS3 card about 2 months ago. We have had some issues with CRC errors that we haven’t been able to identify yet, but it hasn’t been too bad. For the most part we’re really happy with the setup we have.

Here’s the pluses as I see them:

• Having a Mikrotik terminate my DS3 means that I don’t have to train our techs on another device since the rest of our network is Mikrotik
• The point and click GUI makes things nice for everyone - no command line interfaces to train people on
• Readily available, real-time stats in the GUI are great tools to have

Here’s the minuses as I see them:

• There’s a lack of some stats for the SBE interfaces themselves. For example, you can’t see CRC errors, etc (we have to ask our upstream provider if they see any), you also can’t see how much traffic is going over the interface so we just look at the ethernet interface on the same router.
• In talking with Mikrotik support, it seems that the SBE driver may need some updating since it’s a little old

All in all going this route has been a good thing for us. We’ve standardized all of our sites on Mikrotik so it makes sense to use it for terminating the DS3’s too.

I’d also love to hear from others who use these cards It seems like there just aren’t many people who have them.

Thanks very much for your detailed post. It sound like I will give the SBE card a try. Is there any specific SBE model of DS3 card to choose over another? On SBE’s site I see 2 different DS3 cards listed. Which card models are you using?

Hello,

A few years ago we ran the SBE DS3 cards for quite some time without any trouble. Moving away from our Cisco 72xxVXR w/NPE400 was a little nerve wracking, but we had to do something to improve performance. A MikroTik box with 3GHz CPU was the answer. Latency dropped and overall network performance improved with the MikroTik router.

Today we are running several MT routers as core routers. All of them have multiple GigE interfaces and we have pushed several hundred Mbps through them at times. They have been rock solid and our only complaint has been a piss poor BGP module that currently limits us from taking full tables from multiple upstream providers. Hopefully MikroTik will resolve their BGP issues soon. (and they may already have) When they do there will be little reason to go with any other router solution.

BTW, who are you getting your DS3 from? I bet we can beat their price and provide a better service. Let me know if you are interested.

Best,

Brad

Hi Brad;

Thanks for your post! Sounds like I should give the SBE card a try. I have an IT friend that has had good luck with the Sangoma DS3 card which less expensive than the SBE card. If only MT supported the Sangoma. Can you suggest a good source for SBE cards? We have already signed with Broadwing for our DS3. They have a great SLA. Time will tell whether this was a good decision.

Lant