On Wed, Dec 17, 2008, Chris wrote: > All the responses have been really helpful. Thanks to everyone for being > friendly and for taking the time to answer in detail. > I've asked a hardware provider to quote for a couple of x86 boxes and I'll > look for suitable Intel NICs too. > > Jim: We're a very small ISP and have a full mix of packet sizes on the > network but the vast majority is outbound on port 80 so hopefully that'll > help. > > Any more input will of course be considered. I may post the NIC models for > approval if I'm scratching my head again :)
Just FYI, the more recent Intel hardware has multiple hardware TX/RX queues, implemented via seperate (IIRC) PCIe channels, and Linux/FreeBSD is growing support to handle these multiple queues via multiple kernel threads. Ie, multiple CPUs handling packet forwarding. The trick is whether they can pull it off in a way that scales the FIB and RIB lookups and updates across 4 core (and more) boxes. But 40kpps is absolutely doable on one CPU. Some of the FreeBSD guys working on it are looking at supporting 1mil pps + on 10GE cards (in the public source tree), so .. :) Adrian
