> Wu Hongning wrote:
>
> Who can say something about the software system in the network device,
> especially in high-end router, 3-lay switch-router, etc? Is that a RTOS? How
> about the degree of "real-time", soft or hard?
I am not an expert on that toppic, but i would say that switching
on ISO-OSI-level 2 is done directly by special hardware (except for
store&forward) to improve throughput and decrease latencies
(you only have to filter/switch between port according to MAC-addresses).
You may use linux or VxWorx for fast-switching between
ethernet-cards, but that is a bad solution!
If you realy like to do so, then a "real" RTOS will not be much
better than the standard linux-kernel! Especialy, when Linux only has to
care about the ethernet-cards on kernel-level, then it will be
as fast and as responsive as a "real" RTOS, becaus it does exactly
the same job!
As routing on level 3 needs a TCP/IP-implementation, this has to
be done by software. As there should nothing else running on that machine,
a "firm"-RTOS should do it.
"Kernel-Space-Application" like routing/firewalling have "firm"-RT behavior,
so it should be ok ...
Configuration programms on user-level are of coures not RT-aware, but
they don't have to be :-)
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