>Why vendors feel the need to design route >processors which are barely upgradable in RAM, not upgradable in >processing power, and at best 24-36 months behind the times of the >technology the Dell Interns are pushing for $499, is beyond me.
It's called profit margins. The thing that surprises me is that there aren't any small vendors offering fairly generic routing boxes, i.e. Intel-based motherboard, lots of RAM, BSD/Linux base OS with Zebra for routing and some of the many PCI cards supporting T1 and DS3 circuits (not to forget GigE...). In most other industries that are dominated by a few large brand-name high-margin suppliers there are also several low-margin suppliers offering generic products with minimal handholding. Why don't we see this in the router business? --Michael Dillon
