Author Archives: TriMike

Posting again

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Hi,

Well it’s been awhile since my last blog post so I figured I’d give an update. Firstly, I’m not going to be doing the California 70.3 this year unfortunately. Pulled out due to fitness (or lack there of) and also financial reasons. The trip was going to be very expensive and as such I felt I should be really fit for the race. So all in all decided to pull out and enter again another year when my fitness was up to scratch.

I have entered the Swiss 70.3 instead. Training picked up well in January and February but stopped late Feb due to sinus infection. I am picking up the training now however. Hopefully not too late in the day though for a decent result in Switzerland.

Cisco router memory upgrades

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Recently I needed to do some tests on some Cisco lab kit I have access to. The tests were with full BGP feeds – which cannot be handled by the lab routers due to minimal memory specifications. I set about investigating the memory upgrades and was shocked (again!) at the price of real Cisco RAM. More worryingly, some of the on-line shops I looked at did not convince me they were selling genuine Cisco RAM rather than “compatible”.

Anyway, I decided to look into getting “compatible” memory since these are lab routers, out of warranty and are not under SmartNet contract. Your mileage may vary with this information and you may invalidate your SmartNet or warranty status. That said…

I needed to upgrade Cisco 1801, Cisco 1841, Cisco 2801 and Cisco 2811 routers.

The 1801 went simply from 128MB to 384MB with a Crucial memory SO-DIMM part CT3264X335. The 1801 takes a 200pin SO-DIMM DDR 2700, CL2.5, Unbuffered, Non-ECC, DDR333 memory module. A slower DDR DIMM module may work, but this DDR2700 one worked for me.

The Cisco 1841 took 144pin SDRAM SO-DIMM, PC133, non-ECC, unbuffered. This is the same as the 2801.

The Cisco 2801 takes 144 pin SDRAM SO-DIMM, Unbuffered, non-ECC, PC133. A list of compatible parts should be: KVR133X64SC3/256, MT8LSDT3264LHG-133, THLY25N01C75, CT32M64S8W7E, HYS64V32220GDL-7, MH32S64PFJ6L, EBS26UC6APS-75, HYM72V32M636BT-6, THLY25N01B75, NT256S64VH8A0GM-75, MT8LSDT3264HG-133

The 2811 can be upgraded from 256MB to 512MB or 768MB. The router takes 184-pin unbuffered, ECC, DDR PC2700 ram. I initially tried a Crucial part (CT6472Z335 which was a module MT9VDDT6472AY-335F1) which did not work. The MT9VDDT6472AY is a single rank 512MB module. I then tried a dual rank 512MB module (KVR266X72C2/512) which worked. I would expect MT18VDDT6472AG or similar (with 18 modules rather than 9 modules) dual rank 512MB module to work.

During this investigation and upgrade, it would appear that the 2500, 2600, 3600 take the same flash modules too. They do support different flash module sizes, but realising that the modules are compatible makes troubleshooting or replacing parts simpler. Of course, you have to re-flash the appropriate IOS!

Hopefully this will help someone out there! Of course, using non-Cisco memory may get you into hot water if you ever ring Cisco for support! You have been warned.