FYI, unix has also had routing capabilities inherent in the operating
system, as well as software for BGP, OSPF, RIP and friends in free
software like routed/gated since the beginning of the Internet. But,
would I ever use any unix box for a router? Not unless it was five
years ago, it was linux, and I was starting up an ISP with pocket
change. That was the trend while companies were out there providing
descent T-1/ISDN/PRI/Frame Relay cards and drivers for Linux x86
machines. The good thing about this setup, is that Linux can route a
full T-1 without any trouble using aging 486 hardware (ie: very very
dirt cheap router... $50?). But what's that , you want to route a
DS-3? Unlikely. I don't know anyone that makes DS-3/HSSI cards for
PCs. Anyone want to jump in on that?
But, I've never trusted Windows NT/98 etc to do any routing, unless I
wanted it to crash all the time -- and no I'm really not wanting to
start a discussion about which is better or anything. I'd be interested
to see how much microsoft has cleaned it up in 2000. I really have a
lot of hope for this OS in terms of functions (ie: active directory) and
hopefully a newfound stability.
In general any PC is not built for high speed routing. There will be
hardware architecture limitations to it's performance. Also, since the
operating systems are so bloated (compared to something streamlined for
routing like IOS), and running tons of applications at the same time --
unless you have a dedicated box -- a server will have a lot of other
things to do other then route packets. If you have no needs for real
performance, perhaps you could use a windows platform as a router, but
considering the resource needs of Windows in terms of hardware, you'd be
better off buying a real router instead.
There is an interesting Linux mini-distribution out there called LRP, or
The Linux Router Project. It's a linux OS that fits onto a floppy (or
it did at least) and has full capabilities for routing and other things
like firewalling I'd assume. I haven't looked at it for a long time.
It's at http://www.linuxrouter.org although the server doesn't appear to
be accepting connections right now. hmmm, I hope it's not running on a
LRP distribution hahaha.
David
Billy Monroe wrote:
>
> I see that Microsoft has provided resources to configure OSPF and RIP in
> Windows 2000 servers
> to provide routing capabilities.
>
> Has anybody evaluate this ? Do you think this could substitute 'real'
> routers ?
>
> Thanks,
>
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