[36588] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: gigabit router (was Re: Getting a "portable" /19 or /20)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (mike harrison)
Wed Apr 11 01:20:42 2001
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 23:24:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: mike harrison <meuon@highertech.net>
To: Roeland Meyer <rmeyer@mhsc.com>
Cc: "'Craig Partridge'" <craig@aland.bbn.com>,
"Richard A. Steenbergen" <ras@e-gerbil.net>,
"nanog@merit.edu" <nanog@merit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <9DC8BBAD4FF100408FC7D18D1F092286039E43@condor.mhsc.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10104102311410.4387-100000@home.highertech.net>
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Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
> Dual/Quad 1Ghz PIIIs, anyone?
For routers, single fast CPU's, fast ram and fast PCI buses
work wonders, hence my liking the Alpha processor systems.
Mostly because of a really good PCI bus. On other lists
the discussions get real technical as to why, and a dual 800+
system is fast enough it does not matter... but unless the code
(Zebra/Gated/Routed) is designed to use multi-processors,
it does not help the router deamon. It will free up resources
for other tasks.
In playing around I summarize the differences as:
*nix boxen routers: Decent Hardware, Great OS, more than
enough CPU/RAM cheap to make up for differences in most cases.
Purpose built systems: GREAT hardware, Minimal OS tuned for the
application at hand (routing).
Funny thing is, I am typing this on a roof, using a 200mhz Linux
boxen with 2 nics used for wireless network routing... using SSH
and Xwindows while it routes packets for 2.4ghz DSSS and some 23ghz
(10mbps fdx) analog traffic. It's a great night to be babysitting the
network...
I think as hardware and software evolve over time, all of these
arguments will fade into volatile ram.
