From owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Sep 19 17:17:47 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 52B7916A41F for ; Mon, 19 Sep 2005 17:17:47 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from smtpout.mac.com (smtpout.mac.com [17.250.248.71]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1439343D46 for ; Mon, 19 Sep 2005 17:17:46 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from mac.com (smtpin02-en2 [10.13.10.147]) by smtpout.mac.com (Xserve/8.12.11/smtpout14/MantshX 4.0) with ESMTP id j8JHHkXw029090; Mon, 19 Sep 2005 10:17:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [10.1.1.209] (nfw2.codefab.com [199.103.21.225] (may be forged)) (authenticated bits=0) by mac.com (Xserve/smtpin02/MantshX 4.0) with ESMTP id j8JHHir8013248; Mon, 19 Sep 2005 10:17:45 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <432EC4FF.4030706@lvdx.com> References: <432EC4FF.4030706@lvdx.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v734) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Message-Id: <8AB0B562-974F-48EB-BCB4-B8491E7AEFF5@mac.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Charles Swiger Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 13:17:22 -0400 To: Daniel Pocock X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.734) Cc: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD, quagga (BGP) and 2950 VLANs X-BeenThere: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Internet Services Providers List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 17:17:47 -0000 On Sep 19, 2005, at 10:02 AM, Daniel Pocock wrote: > I've been told that FreeBSD performs routing computations in linear > time, even with large routing tables (such as from BGP), and that > it is therefore superior to Linux for use as a border router. Is > this so, and are there any specific documents I should review about > the performance of FreeBSD routing? I believe FreeBSD uses a radix lookup for the routing table which is O (1); I don't know enough about the implementation in Linux to make claims about one platform being superior. > I've discovered that there is the 4.11 release and the 5.4 > release. Are there any compelling reasons why I should choose one > of these over the other, for my intended application? The only > application I will be running is quagga. If you are setting up a new system, you should go with 5.4. 4.11 is older and thus extremely well-tested by now, and might arguably be a bit more reliable, but 5.4 has better support for ACPI and recent hardware, as well as a significantly better SMP implementation. > I'm planning to connect the FreeBSD server to a trunk port on a > Cisco 2950 and put each interconnected IP provider into a separate > VLAN. The documentation I've read so far suggests that FreeBSD is > happy with VLANs - will this arrangement work and will it have any > significant effect on performance? This ought to work fine, but you might want to make sure your NICs supports VLAN_MTU and VLAN_HWTAGGING options to help offload some of the work: bge0: flags=8802 mtu 1500 options=1a "man 4 vlan" has a more complete discussion, including a list of NICs which have this kind of hardware support. The Broadcom bge's and Intel's em seem to work well. -- -Chuck