[LARTC] Re: the "cisco vs. Linux" thread (two answers (I have digest, sorry), Nick Erkert, Joshua Snyder)

[José Ildefonso Camargo Tolosa]

> Message: 5
> Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2004 14:44:26 -0700
> From: Nicholas Erkert <nick@erkert.com>
> To: lartc@mailman.ds9a.nl
> Subject: Re: [LARTC] 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@imagestream.com>
> To: Sudheer Divakaran <sudheer@svw.com>
> Cc: lartc@mailman.ds9a.nl
> Subject: Re: [LARTC] 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.
> 
> 
>