Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 08:13:36 -0400 (EDT) From: Jamie Bowden <jamie@itribe.net> To: "C. Stephen Gunn" <csg@waterspout.com> Cc: Richard Archer <rha@interdomain.net.au>, freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Support for passive backplane chassis? Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.3.96.980731081248.2639L-100000@animaniacs.itribe.net> In-Reply-To: <199807310551.AAA13188@tsunami.waterspout.com>
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On Fri, 31 Jul 1998, C. Stephen Gunn wrote: > In message <l03130318b1e6eae3d5e0@[203.17.167.127]>, Richard Archer writes: > > >I am thinking of using a passive backplane system with 16 PCI slots. > >This would allow each router to handle up to 64 ethernet segments. > >But I can't find much information about how these interact with FreeBSD. > > Richard, > > This would scare the heck out of me. I use a FreeBSD box at my > day job to route between 5 Ethernet Interfaces. While it's a fast > box, and it all works fine, I don't want to think about the bandwidth > aggregation problems you might have with 64 ethernet cards on one > machine. At that level you're not looking for a CPU to make decisions > on the packets. You want a Switch. > > I would check out Lucent's Cajun Switch, or some of the nicer Cisco > 10/100 switches that can take a route processor. The Lucent one claims > to be 10/100 on lots of ports (140 or so) and provide Layer-3 switching > (basically routing) in hardware, at wire speed. While you're looking > at $25K or so, racks of BSD machines aren't free either. > > Don't get me wrong here, FreeBSD is great, but PCI isn't going to > handle what you want. At least not at high saturation levels for > each subnet. Just wondering, how does this building hook to the rest > of the universe? I have a baynetworks accelar switch that was built just for this kind of nightmare...little pricey, but worth it. -- Jamie Bowden Systems Administrator, iTRiBE.net If we've got to fight over grep, sign me up. But boggle can go. -Ted Faber (on Hasbro's request for removal of /usr/games/boggle) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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