Date: 14 Aug 2003 13:33:26 -0400 From: "J. Seth Henry" <jshamlet@comcast.net> To: Mykroft Holmes IV <mykroft@explosive.mail.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD as router - performance vs hardware routers Message-ID: <1060882405.7296.61.camel@alexandria> In-Reply-To: <3F3BA7D8.9060006@explosive.mail.net> References: <1060871994.5979.12.camel@alexandria> <3F3BA7D8.9060006@explosive.mail.net>
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Wow, I think you guys have convinced me. I have had very good luck with FreeBSD on an 933MHz EPIA board. It has performed well, and remained stable for several months now. Nary a single lockup, even under load (though it doesn't like floating point math much - folding@home crashes immediately) Only the network controller has problems occasionally, sometimes causing initial connections to hang for a few seconds. I understand it's a quirk in the VIA ethernet controller - but I've found a dual slot PCI riser board, so I can load two normal cards into the router. One quick question, though - how much RAM should I install in this beast? I have a 65Mb DIMM laying around, but I could probably pull some 128's from my Windows box if need be. Thanks, Seth Henry On Thu, 2003-08-14 at 11:16, Mykroft Holmes IV wrote: > J. Seth Henry wrote: > > > Hello, > > I have recently been having problems with my Netgear RT314 broadband > > gateway router. Having decided to replace it, I started searching for a > > new router - only to discover that every sub $300 router I found had a > > history of problems. Lockups, random reboots, or worse, they would just > > turn into black holes (like my RT314). > > > > First, and I know this is off-topic, is anyone here happy with their > > router enough to recommend it? I'd prefer to go with a hardware router, > > but I prize reliability and stability apparently higher than the current > > crop of manufacturers. Even the Cisco SOHO9x/83x series has a bad track > > record, and they are $250/$500 respectively! I'd like to keep it under > > $300, as I can build a mini-ITX box with everything I need for a router > > for about that. > > > > Barring finding a decent, reliable router, I thought about building a > > mini-ITX system (with the 800Mhz C3) with a second NIC, and a CF card > > for storage - and using FreeBSD as a router. I'm fairly certain that I > > can get most of what I need to work going, DHCP client on the WAN link, > > DHCP server and NAT/PAT on the LAN side. Apparently, firewall support is > > built-in as well. > > > > What I'm not sure about is performance. Has anyone built a cable modem > > gateway router using FreeBSD and "low-end" hardware like this? If so, > > what were your results? > > > > Also, can a FreeBSD router support things like the Vonage VOIP box (the > > Cisco ATA186)? > > > > Thanks, > > Seth Henry > > > > > Well, a FreeBSD router is going to significantly outperform any of those > cheapo routers. Which are mostly running either a custom Linux or > something similar on a 386 or 486 equivalent. Of course, the issues with > them tend to be either buggy proprietary code or flaky hardware. Even a > P100 running FreeBSD will easily outperform them, and will be very > stable if the hardware's decent. > > I've used Linux, Mac OS X (Darwin) and FreeBSD as a router, routing > PPPoE 1MB DSL, Dial and my current PPPoA 3MB DSL, on systems ranging > from a P90 with 16MB of RAM to the current PowerMac G3/333. The hardware > you're looking at is massive overkill, a used P2 or Pentium system is > more than enough to route cable or DSL. > > And yes, it will support just about anything you have living behind it. > Probably better than the POS hardware routers you were looking at. > > Hardware routers don't really get to be decent until you;'re looking at > a real Cisco (1000 series or better) running real IOS. > > As a Note, the top end routers out there, Junipers, run JunOS, which is > a FreeBSD variant. A Juniper M160 can route OC192's at wire speed > (That's 10Gb/s folks). > > Adam > >
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