> So you expect additional reliability from stacking ebayed cisco equipment > with OpenBSD bridges behind them, as the original poster mentioned, and cost > effectiveness by buying used cisco equipment and paying for relicensing so > that you can get updates, compared to setting up OpenBSD boxes as routers, I > am not following the logic, and still think the original post was > ridiculous. I understand the logic behind the no moving parts embedded > solution ideas, but am I the only person whom has seen embedded equipment > fail 2-4x more often than the Proliants behind them? I just don't think that > embedded=reliable is a cut and dry equation.
Provided the Cisco boxes will failover to different bridges, I think that it would increase reliability. There are also many occasions where it is inpractical to have an OpenBSD box terminate a link - T3, OC-12, etc. I explicitly mentioned that OpenBSD is much cheaper. One might get higher cost effectiveness in a few occasions (such as where the networking guys are clueless about OpenBSD). Of course embedded != reliable, but there are many embedded systems available that provide much higher reliability than standard x86 systems. Most Cisco routers I've seen do have moving parts - big fans. You're probably not the only person to see such failure rates, but I expect new, well cared for Cisco routers have higher hardware reliability than new, well cared for Proliants. Other embedded equipment is very variable. What embedded equipment were you talking about? The original post was ridiculous, but that doesn't make your reply accurate.
