[LARTC] Linux router performance

[Tomas Bonnedahl]

Fermín Galán Márquez skrev:
> Hi,
>
> I wonder about the performance of a Linux box used as router (I guest I'm
> not the first :). Althought I know it mainly depends on the hardware, I'm
> trying to find some references on the topic or comparations with other
> routing solutions (FreeBSD box used as router, Cisco, etc). For example,
> http://facweb.cti.depaul.edu/jyu/Publications/Yu-Linux-TSM2004.pdf
> (althought is related with Linux-briding more than with Linux-routing) shows
> in Figure 14 that with an AMD Duron 1.3GHz 512M RAM a throughput of 90 Mbps
> can be achieved.
>
> Anybody knows any other similar analysis, please?
>
> Best regards,
>
> --------------------
> Fermín Galán Márquez
> CTTC - Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya
> Parc Mediterrani de la Tecnologia, Av. del Canal Olímpic s/n, 08860
> Castelldefels, Spain
> Room 1.02
> Tel : +34 93 645 29 12 
> Fax : +34 93 645 29 01
> Email address: fermin.galan at cttc.es 
>
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>   

This was seen on the mailing list a couple of years ago, doesnt say much 
but it shows what could be done.


On Mon, 02 Dec 2002 22:30:10 +0100
Anton Tinchev <atl at unixsol.org> wrote:


> > Hi,
> > first i wonna thank you for the great work.
> > I have few slack boxes with several 3com cards that acts as routers.
> > Some of them has 50+ vlans, 100 000+ routing entries, full BGP (zebra) with 10+ peers
> > and routes 50-70 mb/s traffic. Everithing is rock solid, few months uptimes.
>   

Sounds pretty impressive, really. I admire such setups.


> > I wona to upgrade some of my cards and need advice what to use.
> > On 100+mb/s interrups killing my boxes - 20 000+/s (yes, coalescing, i know:))
> > What to use? tigon2 or tigon3 for gigabit? (3c985 or 3c996)
>   

None of them! Or at least not tigon3! I've tried to use one (3c996-T), and I experienced
strange system lockups. The board is a dual Tyan Tiger MP with couple of Athlon MP 1600+. It was
just hanging from time to time with completely no output of any kind. Just rock solid lockup. :/

Anyway, I changed to a good old 3c905C and now I don't have any problems. Well, I'm serving at
half of your rate, but anyway. So, I would suggest using HP equipment. At least I've heard that
it works quote well.