On Wed, 2 Oct 2002, James Earl wrote:
>
> I'm in a similar position, but on a smaller scale. I'm trying to figure
> out where these Switched Gateway/Routers/Firewall/VPN devices that are
> coming on the market fit in, and where it is better to use our favorite
> FreeBSD machine to do the work? Would I be wrong in assuming these little
> hardware devices are faster at the job than a FreeBSD machine?
In my opinion, unless a) you have a corporate policy which says what to
deploy or b) you have a very large scale project which needs "Big Iron"
or c) you need dedicated hardware/software only available for the "hardware
solution" (ie EIGRP, or some very specialized WAN card) there is no reason
to install a dedicated "hardware solution" instead of a BSD box.
They may be atractive in the beginning, but you need to factor the
costs and availability of support, software licences/updates, replacement
parts and the like. Have you ever asked how much an extra 100BT card for
a Cisco costs? :)
One of the main advantages of the BSD/Linux solution is the hardware
availability. If a NIC blows, you can get another one in less than one
hour for less than $80. You don't need a dedicated (Cisco|Nokia|whoever)
hardware.
Fer
>
> James
>
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