........Message: 5 Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2004 14:44:26 -0700 From: Nicholas Erkert <nick@xxxxxxxxxx> To: lartc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: the "cisco vs. Linux" thread
Glen Mabey wrote:
On Thu, Jul 08, 2004 at 12:07:57PM -0400, Jos? Ildefonso Camargo Tolosa wrote:
you can use an Athlon 64 with DDR RAM and very good network hardware (that is very, very important)
Regarding NICs, are there any recommendations out there for which manufacturers to go with? I don't need anything faster than 100baseT.
Thank you-- Glen Mabey
I have had some good luck with Intel cards using either drivers. I haven't noticed much difference between them but I haen't done a lot of stress testing on them.
On a side note has anyone built a linux router with dual/quad port ethernet cards (ie Intel PRO/1000 MT Quad Port Server Adapter)?
I used a dlink one: not fully tested, but seem to work fine.
--Nick Erkert
Message: 8 Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 17:31:06 -0500 (EST) From: Joshua Snyder <josh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: Sudheer Divakaran <sudheer@xxxxxxx> Cc: lartc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Is Linux based Router feasible
Let me start out by saying that I work for a company that makes Linux based routers. <plug> Checkout www.imagestream.com </plug> Anyway, any Linux box will perform just fine at the data rates your talking about.
Some realtek cards (and even some 3com) report: Too much work at interrupt, and REALLY slows down things, even at 256kbps. There are workarounds, but it just raises the CPU load A LOT (altough things starts working faster).
You don't even have to worry about what type of hardware your using as long as it not more than 5 years old. Now to answer some of the points that other people have brought up. You can make a pc that has a large number of interfaces. I have seen Linux boxes with 100 t-1's and 2 ds-3's plugged into them... 8 port t-1 cards are common and dual port ds-3 cards are easy to get. You just have to get mainboards that have enough pci slots. In general as long as you stay inside of what the hardware can do you should be able to route at line rate. Currently most pc hardware is limited to about a max of 1Gbit/sec but server hardware can be used to build routers that will route 4Gbit/sec. Not as good as some of the highest end cisco routers... but ten's of thousands of dollars cheaper. One thing I have seen doing testing of many routers vs Linux routers most cisco routers tend to get badly boughed down when running many access lists. This is not a big problem with a Linux box or even other non-cisco routers. If you don't believe me checkout...
http://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2003/0714rev.html
Just as I said: cisco use very *small* cpus.
You should have no problems doing what you want to do.
josh
p.s. alot of the packet per sec numbers that cisco talks about are only valid when routing from Ethernet to Ethernet interfaces and with packets that stay in the fast switching path on the cisco. If you start talking about other interfaces all of those numbers are out of the window. This leads many people to end-up with cisco's that are way under powered for the application. I am not saying that cisco's can't route at wire-speed but that most people don't have the right router for the job.
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