I can vouch for 96Mbit/s on a dual-fastE firewall. Our gigE firewall hasn't yet seen enough traffic. The lmiting factor, however, has been packet-per-second, not bits-per-second. Specifically, when we hit around 20,000 pps, the firewall started dropping packets, and the console didn't work well. So for one of our applications that used small packets, we could only get 20Mbit/s through. It was explained to me that this is a limitation of interrupts per second that a P-II or P-III chip can handle, and that each packet inbound generated a CPU interrupt for packet checksum calculation. I am using Tulip cards. I understand that 3com 3c9xx can do checksum calculation on the NIC, and that Alteon GigE chipsets can do interrupt colaescing, so you might to better with them. But I've never done packet-per-second testing on either of those two. ---- Dani Roisman droisman@station.sony.com > -----Original Message----- > From: linux-net@ddx.a2000.nu [mailto:linux-net@ddx.a2000.nu] > Sent: Sunday, September 17, 2000 8:42 AM > To: linux-net@vger.kernel.org > Subject: max mbits/sec using linux router (with firewall rules) > > > can someone tell me what the max performance will be with an > linux router? > i will be using two gigabit adapters and i think it's best if > i use a dual > pci bus mainbord. > > does is matter what kind of cpu / memory i use ? > so will p3-933 be faster than a p3xeon-500 with 2mb cache or > (does cache > matter?) (and what about a dual or quad cpu system?) > and sdram vs rimm ? > > i will use the router mainly for firewall and accounting rules > 1 gigabit link will be connected to a switch > the other will be the internet link (colocated) > > or what are my options with dedicated routers? > i don't need many options which i think all gigabit routers of cisco > have... > > - > : send the line "unsubscribe > linux-net" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > - : send the line "unsubscribe linux-net" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org