Nobody who had to work with 6509's/7609's at an ISP is shedding a tear over this.
Someone (Richard Steenbergen?) once made a joke that we should take the last 6509/7609 and launch it into orbit to celebrate.
It's not that they weren't popular. At one point in the mid 2000's they appeared to make up about 1/3 of major internet routers (if you looked around a carrier hotel). This was due to their extremely low cost compared to actual high end routers. While they had serious limitations and were notoriously sensitive to "IOS roulette", somehow you could just make them work.
Someone (Richard Steenbergen?) once made a joke that we should take the last 6509/7609 and launch it into orbit to celebrate.
It's not that they weren't popular. At one point in the mid 2000's they appeared to make up about 1/3 of major internet routers (if you looked around a carrier hotel). This was due to their extremely low cost compared to actual high end routers. While they had serious limitations and were notoriously sensitive to "IOS roulette", somehow you could just make them work.