> I also think that it is extremely important to seperate "what you can do > with a redhat cd and a dream" from "what someone can do with PC hardware". Absolutely correct ;)
> The bottom line is: You are only going to get so much performance when > you forward packets through a box which is processing an interrupt per > packet, doing a patricia tree lookup per packet, copying the packet in > memory a couple times, and doing some sequential comparisons through a > firewall ruleset on every packet. None of the above has anything to do > with PC hardware, but rather the poor software that people currently > making "PC routers" choose to run. > > If someone were to take *half* the software innovations which have been > made over the past 15 years (a decent fib, interrupt coalescing, > compiled packet matching rulesets, etc) and applied them as if they knew > something about networking and coding, they could very easily produce a > box using off the shelf PC hardware which woops up on a 7206vxr for > somewhere less than $2000. If there is one thing PC hardware is good at, > it is getting faster fast enough to keep up with the amount of bad code > people keep churning out. :) Of course, then they would probably need to > know a little bit more about routing protocols than just "how to compile > zebra", but assuming they did that too... They would be bought by Cisco. > :) You may find it interesting that both Linux and FreeBSD now have interrupt coalescing, and www.hipac.org is building a compiled ruleset. As far as broken-ness of linux rib/route lookup code: Yes, it is so very 1985, but there may be changes coming soon [Pilosoft may be sponsoring a rewrite]. > Anything else is either a cute playtoy for your house, or an endless > source of laughter for the people who know better as they watch you work > away at it. The vast majority of this discussion falls into the latter > category, but after a while even this gem of a subject turns from funny > to just plain sad. :) ...Until they get bought by Cisco? ;)