On Fri, Oct 18, 2002 at 04:45:36PM +0100, Michael Styer wrote: >On Fri, 18 Oct 2002, Roger Burton West wrote: >> Something I've noticed on several DSL router/hub combination boxes is >> that they're often even worse collision generators than normal hubs. >Does that (i.e., decreased performance) apply a fortiori to DSL >router/switch/firewall, or router/switch/wireless-access-point/firewall >combination boxes?
I don't have enough data to say. I suspect that this is a side-effect of the DSL box being built down to a price - cheap network hardware won't be noticed by most users anyway, especially if they haven't had a hub before (and if they had why would they want a built-in one?). >even an old 286 or 386 is going to cost a few quid Not necessarily. )it looks like it >might be cheaper, and certainly more convenient, just to buy one thing >that does it all. If you don't mind not knowing about the innards of it, and having to wait for a manufacturer's bug-fix... it's the usual open-source vs commercial software argument. Certainly my kit (Netgear 8-port switch, P166 firewall running Linux, Fujitsu DSL router/hub supplied by BT 'cos they didn't do wires-only in those days) is cheaper than a single-box solution for the same capability would have been: but that capability includes N:N and N:1 NAT (on different parts of the same network), 8 ports fully switched (I'm not counting the other internal network since most of that was free kit), and so on. Roger
