From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jul 8 15:05:11 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA11539 for questions-outgoing; Tue, 8 Jul 1997 15:05:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from main.gbdata.com (USR2-1.detnet.com [207.113.12.39]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA11511 for ; Tue, 8 Jul 1997 15:04:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from gclarkii@localhost) by main.gbdata.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id DAA01212; Tue, 8 Jul 1997 03:10:59 -0500 (CDT) From: Gary Clark II Message-Id: <199707080810.DAA01212@main.gbdata.com> Subject: Re: Building a multiport router out of FreeBSD To: escher@ddyne.com Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 03:10:59 -0500 (CDT) Cc: mike@sentex.net, questions@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <33C12E39.C82A274C@ddyne.com> from "Samuel D. Brown" at "Jul 7, 97 12:58:17 pm" X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL22 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Samuel D. Brown wrote: > Mike Tancsa wrote: > > > Hi, > > We are going to be upping our connection to the net to 5Mbps > > in the near > > future. Our upstream provider is going to provide us with a managed > > CISCO > > that we will have no access to unfortunately. Since we have fairly > > complex > > routing requirements, we need some sort of multi port router in the > > office. > > Considering I can build a Pentium 133 with a 4 Ethernet cards for > > around > > $1200 Canadian (~$800 USD), this is significantly cheaper and in some > > ways > > My experience with using FreeBSD as a dedicated router is that while > it works like a charm, is trouble free and easy to configure, there > remain human-noticable slow downs in transmission introduced by the box, > even at low loads. If performance is important to you, and if you have > the money to spare, going with a hardware dedicated routing product will > give you distinctly better performance. > S. > Hello, I've had atleast 4 routers based on BSD installed at customer sites. These machines have ranged from a 486SX-25 with 8MB which only had two interfaces, static routing and only had a 128k ISDN load to a AMD K5-166 with 128MB and 5 interfaces running GateD in full routing. You have to have the right ethernet cards to even have a chance at getting good work out of it. Right now, run the Intel cards and you should have no problems keeping up with a couple of ethernets and a 5meg (4 T-1s????) dedicated link. Gary -- Gary Clark II (N5VMF) | I speak only for myself and "maybe" my company gclarkii@GBData.COM | Member of the FreeBSD Doc Team Providing Internet and ISP startups - http://WWW.GBData.com for information FreeBSD FAQ at ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.ORG/pub/FreeBSD/docs/FAQ.latin1