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Date:      Fri, 3 Jun 2005 13:53:06 -0700
From:      Charlie Schluting <schluting@gmail.com>
To:        freebsd-net@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: route metric
Message-ID:  <83946540050603135324d6b8cd@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20050603202109.GA22098@gargantuan.com>
References:  <20050603181636.GA54906@gicco.homeip.net> <20050603191351.GA54164@ip.net.ua> <20050603202109.GA22098@gargantuan.com>

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> it would be nice to have a feature like this, where you could have
> multiple same-prefix, same-metric routes in a FIB, and the packets would
> be balanced to the next hop, either on a per-flow or per-packet basis.
> i have seen a lot of answers to this request over the years along the
> lines of ``FreeBSD isn't a router'', which is sad since it does perform
> the task of packet routing exceedingly well, and a heck of a lot cheaper
> than vendor C.  all of the usual reasons that OSS is better apply here,
> too.  who wouldn't like SSH on all of their routers without paying $$$
> for a crypto image?!?
>=20

It does do many things well enough, but have you tried to use dot1q on
5.x with an Intel chip? Those bugs are reason #1. You can't have a
production router that reboot when you run tcpdump or traceroute :)

Reason #2 is latency. Vendor C put a lot of time and money into
features like CEF that take advantage of hardware packet forwarding. A
purely software-based device simply can't keep up with large flows,
and definitely introduces latency--especially when filtering.

My $0.02 :)

-Charlie



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