From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Jun 22 18:23:23 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id SAA10473 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 22 Jun 1995 18:23:23 -0700 Received: from genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au [129.127.96.120]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with ESMTP id SAA10465 ; Thu, 22 Jun 1995 18:23:21 -0700 Received: from msmith@localhost by genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (8.6.9/8.6.9) id KAA27588; Fri, 23 Jun 1995 10:50:41 +0930 From: Michael Smith Message-Id: <199506230120.KAA27588@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Subject: Re: FreeBSD as a router To: tom@uniserve.com (Tom Samplonius) Date: Fri, 23 Jun 1995 10:50:41 +0930 (CST) Cc: jkh@freebsd.org, evanc@synapse.net, hackers@freefall.cdrom.com In-Reply-To: from "Tom Samplonius" at Jun 22, 95 05:42:08 pm Content-Type: text Content-Length: 1097 Sender: hackers-owner@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk Tom Samplonius stands accused of saying: > > That said, be aware that any kind of UN*X box doesn't exactly compete > > with a Cisco in terms of performance. They throw raw hardware at the > > problem whereas we have to do it the hard way, in software. > > The bottleneck certainly can't be in the CPU can it? Where is the > bottleneck with PCI and a good 486 motherboard? Latency. The ability to receive and transmit continually on all ports. As jordan said, router manufacturers throw _serious_ hardware at their designs; most of them are built around special-purpose backplanes with considerably more bandwidth than PCI. They usually have one CPU per interface, and a couple more running the show. > Tom -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and [[ ]] realtime instrument control (ph/fax) +61-8-267-3039 [[ ]] My car has "demand start" - Terry Lambert [[