Re: Router

From: Trygve Selmer (trselmer_at_start.no)
Date: 03/29/05 

Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 02:55:58 +0200

Kevin Brown wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I am wondering what sort of experience anyone has had with Linux running
> a mission critical router? From experience, do you feel that it has
> the ability to route a DS-3 at wire speeds with very minimal to no
> packet filtering enabled? The hardware the router would run is a
> Celeron 2.6GHz w/ 256MB of RAM, a wanPCI-1T3 for the DS-3 and an Intel
> Pro network card.
>
> Not to start a flame war, but for routing, are the BSDs quicker, or are
> Linux and the BSDs very similar in speeds when it comes routing?

I have no experience with BSD, but I've been running Linux for an ISP
for some years. Our main router, an Intel P3 at 800MHz with 512MB ram,
is connected to both our national interchange at 100Mbps and our 10Mbps+
Internet connection. We are running BGP on this machine to our Internet
provider and approx. 40 peers on our Internet Exchange. The software are
"minimal" Slackware and Quagga (formerly Zebra). We also run a firewall
plus shaping on all interfaces to protect us from most of the evils of
the Internet and misuse of bandwidth from some customers.

So, a DS-3 should be no problem with your hardware :-)

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