However it might be a good choice for someone who is building a home lab. It
is much cheaper to piece together some computers and throw zebra on it than
to buy several routers. I've never used Zebra but it sounds like if you had
some existing equipment and wanted to expand on that, couldn't afford to buy
another router but had some old PC's it would be the way to go, since
speed/reliability wouldn't be a real factor in a home lab. Any thoughts?
Joey
-----Original Message-----
From: dre [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2001 10:54 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: alternative to Cisco routers
I disagree, Linux is a bad choice! A Cisco 3640
router would cost about the same and I'd like to see
you get a full BGP table with Linux for the same
hardware cost. plus, linux doesn't have CEF or
any of the standard stuff that comes with IOS
(or JunOS for that matter).
The SMB market does what they will, and who
cares anyways? They have *no* market share,
they aren't Internet players, they aren't market
players, they are NOTHING. what they DON'T
NEED is another strange weird solution that I would
only put into a lab ; they need something standard,
something that works, something that will scale,
something that will perform up to their needs,
and something that most $20/hour NT admins
could configure.
I am all for (ok not for Linux, but for FreeBSD
maybe) an open source OS for research or inside
a lab where others are familiar with it. But
suggesting Linux routers for a SMB (or Enterprise,
or Service Provider) in a production, real environment
is insane. Don't get me wrong, I like Zebra, it's a good
tool. But I would never run it if my mom and pop
needed a "router" solution for their new cybercafe.
The "correct" solution for SMB is a 1600 or 1700
series router. For what you say "most" SMB's
a 1605-R (Single WAN, Dual Ethernet) and two
Catalyst 1900 switches would be more than
sufficient and would cost less in time/effort
alone for the initial setup.
Choose one person out the 165,000 CCNA
certified people, and I'm sure at least 90% of them
could configure this environment for 802.1Q, HSRP,
remote management, NAT, Firewall (Secure Integrated
Software built-in to the router), or VPN (IPSEC, L2TP,
PPTP/MPPE). That's what they are trained to do.
Show me a Linux certification or training program
that discusses T1 cards or Zebra installation/configuration.
And then give me some numbers... Yeah I thought so.
-dre
"anthony kim" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
[EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> This is all well and good for the big time players, ISPs, big corps
> yadda yadda yadda, and companies with cash to burn like so much old toilet
> paper. The Small and Midsized Business market (SMB) almost always can
> accomplish what they want with free Unix or Linux for layer 3 and
> cheap stackable switches with or without 802.1q support.
>
> So my obligatory cisco alternative:
> www.zebra.org
>
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