Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 13:52:05 -0400 From: Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> To: Andre Oppermann <oppermann@pipeline.ch> Cc: "Louis A. Mamakos" <louie@TransSys.COM>, Attila Nagy <bra@fsn.hu>, Luigi Iannone <Luigi.Iannone@lip6.fr>, freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: MPLS Message-ID: <20020529175205.GJ33611@overlord.e-gerbil.net> In-Reply-To: <3CF4E483.2510639@pipeline.ch> References: <Pine.NEB.4.44.0205290915060.28431-100000@tibre.lip6.fr> <Pine.LNX.4.44.0205291108080.7798-100000@scribble.fsn.hu> <3CF4A64A.EE220611@pipeline.ch> <200205291413.g4TEDLRG075458@whizzo.transsys.com> <3CF4E483.2510639@pipeline.ch>
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On Wed, May 29, 2002 at 04:24:03PM +0200, Andre Oppermann wrote: > > > > > > It is true that JUNOS is more or less FreeBSD. But it's only the > > > control plane. All the switching and stack processing happens on > > > the line cards which have their own CPUs and OS. > >=20 > > There is no software involved in the forwarding plane, including > > the line cards, in the Juniper routers. There is another CPU in > > the box running an embedded system kernel, which does supervisory > > things, but that's also not involved in the forwarding operation. >=20 > If there is no kind of software involved on the forwarding plane > then I don't know how the control plane can communicate via ethernet > with the line cards... The internal communication in the router is > via ethernet. The FreeBSD based part runs on an i386 piece called the Routing Rngine, which connects to the "rest of the system" (SFM SSB SCB or FEC boards depending on the model) via FastE (fxp to be precise). The Routing Engine runs the routing protocols and CLI, with all those nice FreeBSD benefits like stability, protected process memory, extensive debugging tools, etc (things that other vendors software lacks :P). After all the routing information is taken in, and all the policy rules considered, a forwarding table is constructed and passed over the ethernet link to the rest of the system. =46rom there, the Internet Processor 2 ASIC (which DOES run microcode) uses the forwarding information as well as the firewall rules which have been passed to it, to look at the headers of every packet and come back with a destination interface (or discard). The linecards and FPCs take care of putting the packet into shared memory, and forwarding it. An elegant solution to the control and forwarding planes, combining the best of all worlds, if you ask me. > I agree with the ASIC hardware. But the BGP implementation smells > awfully like gated (Nexthop). Anyway, a BGP deamon isn't that hard > to write. As someone who has actually written a BGP implementation from scratch, let me be the first to tell you that you are full of shit. BGP is a very complex beast, and Juniper has spent a good amount of time making what is without a doubt the most powerful BGP implementation currently available. --=20 Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras PGP Key ID: 0x138EA177 (67 29 D7 BC E8 18 3E DA B2 46 B3 D8 14 36 FE B6) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-net" in the body of the message
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