Anthony Atkielski wrote:
> From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> > so that after seeing only the first few bytes, they could
> > know what interface to enqueue the outbound packet on
> > *before the entire packet had even come in*.
>
> But this would be even faster with a variable-length address than with a
> fixed-length address. You just read address bits until you find a match,
> and ignore the rest.
That's *slow*.
Remember, fast routers are built out of logic gates, not software. Dynamic
tree structures are hard to build out of gates (no recursion).
> > It's hard to do for something that's truly high-performance.
>
> Something that is high-performance usually costs a lot more than an end-user
> workstation, too, especially with the 90% gross margin that the vendor adds
> to the hardware price. It's reasonable to expect to get what you pay for.
Well, yes. Backbone providers pay lots and lots of money to get routers that
actually work. If all they got was gated running on a workstation, the
backbones wouldn't be performing anywhere near current levels. (Proof: that's
what the old T3 NSFNet routers were, RS/6000s with special hardware to talk to
the T3. Supposedly, they couldn't even keep up with T3s, let alone modern
OC-mumbles.)
--
/==============================================================\
|John Stracke | http://www.ecal.com |My opinions are my own.|
|Chief Scientist |=============================================|
|eCal Corp. |"Collect call from reality, will you accept |
|[EMAIL PROTECTED]|the--" *click* |
\==============================================================/
