Bandwidth Limitations for Cisco Routers (2600)

[mgoldberg]

I have a Cisco 2600 router with a GRE tunnel back to my office. I use a cable modem with speeds that are crazy! When I hook directly from my modem to a pc the speed is faster than when going through the network. Can someone tell me do the routers limit the bandwidth?

Connected directly from a cable modem to a pc:
60MB down, 5 MB up

Connected through my network:
3MB down, 5 MB up

 

[silverhairb]

You can get an idea of throughput from the following Cisco performance information:

http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/downloads/765/tools/quickreference/routerperformance.pdf

Through personal experience, these figures tend to be on the conservative side. It appears that the best Cisco 2600 series router will not hit 60mbs. Not sure which 2600 you're using or what you're running on it, but its unlikely that you'll get 60mbs on even a 2691 I don't know how much additional processing power is used for GRE.

Have you considered a 3660, a 3725 or 3745? Or maybe one of the newer 1861 or 2811 routers? 3660s are relatively inexpensive on eBay.


[the other] Bill

 

[silverhairb]

Also, from the looks of your throughput, the router is running some pretty intensive tasks (heavily limiting "down" throughput and running full "up" throughput). If its a firewall, you might try putting the firewall on a separate platform. I don't know how much overhead is used in running GRE, but that would seem to be

Even under the best of circumstances, you're probably NOT going to get 60mbs through a 2600. For less than $100 on eBay you can get a 3660 with 2FE ports. That might help your throughput. It would probably take your existing config with only minor tweaks (assuming a similar IOS version and feature set).

[the other] Bill

 

[jneiberger]

As you can see from the posted link, the 2600 series is not capable of actually forwarding traffic that fast, although you should be getting higher speeds than you're getting.

 

[burtsbees]

ip cef

That is your friend. You'll get close to 12, depending on the config...

Burt