Date: Sat, 24 Jun 1995 17:09:20 -0700 (PDT) From: "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com> To: bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans) Cc: davidg@Root.COM, hackers@freebsd.org, nc@ai.net Subject: Re: FreeBSD as a router Message-ID: <199506250009.RAA14120@gndrsh.aac.dev.com> In-Reply-To: <199506242146.HAA02005@godzilla.zeta.org.au> from "Bruce Evans" at Jun 25, 95 07:46:02 am
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> > >I would like to quantify that ``fairly small these days''. AMD DX2/66 CPU > >... > >So it looks like $280 vs $720. I would call that ``significant'' amount > > That's still small compared with total system cost. Not really, total system cost for a headless router box is adds only 1.44floppy $36, 500MB disk $248, NCR SCSI $72, case/power $70 or $426.00, for a total of $706 vs $1146. 62% is a hit any way you count the beans :-) > > >of money. Also since this is probably going to be highly memory speed > >dependent I suspect an ASUS PCI/I-486SP3G (PCI) could route packets just > >about as fast as an ASUS PCI/I-P54TP4 due to the fact that thier main memory > >speeds are *very* close. (Note the ASUS 486SP3G costs as much as the > > I think to have any chance of handling n * 100Mbps you would have to lock > all the code and data into a cache, preferably the CPU cache. This wouldn't > be easy in a general purpose system. Agreed. It would always be possible to build better routers using dedicated and carefull chossen hardware and custom software than any GP and OS based router. I don't think there is anyone who will argue with that. I was just trying to point out that David's statement about 486 vs Pentium being a ``fairly small'' amount of money these days is simple not true. I think I have good ground to stand on as a person who is making there very living selling PC hardware and deal with the price/performance trade off issue almost every day of the week. -- Rod Grimes rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com Accurate Automation Company Reliable computers for FreeBSD
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