> This makes me wonder where the market is for midrange devices. Everyone has > Cisco or better in the "core" and Linksys for small offices. What is there > in between? You would think Linux would have a good platform there. >
The router market is quite large as mentioned here from home office to the Internet core. There is the access market (or the edge), enterprise market etc. For the core, one would need BGP and cisco with its own OS (IOS) has a large marketshare. The other big competotor, Juniper has JunOS which is a modified FreeBSD networking stack and routing protocols. many core/edge networking vendors has FreeBSD or vxWorks as OS. Noteworthy to mention vxWorks has BSD 4.4 as networking stack (with modifications, of course). More than OS, it is the routing protocol support also dictate the choice of OS. Most popualr routing stacks are ported to Linux/BSD now. Linux is getting there on routing platforms (versions like monta vista linux), but it is a ruthless market where performance in numbers rule. Scalability should be a keyword, and many startups have been burned in past trying to enter the market. -naga -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
