On Dec 13, 2007 9:09 AM, plug bert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello All! > > Just wanted to ask: > > 1. Is there some sort of formula i can use to > determine the minimum amount of RAM and processor i > need?
You need lots of RAM only if you're doing a full BGP feed or have tons of rules. Ditto for processor. Something like a 600MHz processor with 1GB of RAM should be plenty. > 2. Is there any benefit in using a multicore processor > with an smp-aware kernel in terms of routing > performance? Or does it have more to do with the > amount of RAM installed? No idea. I think individual network drivers are non-reentrant, so only a single processor can be "inside" the network driver at a time. For GigE cards it would boil down to whether the network driver can bind a processor to a particular interface or not. > 3. Is it still true that fw appliances still have an > edge over pc routers in terms of performance? For all > we know these "fw appliances" are running linux under > the hood, with your typical mobo placed inside a fancy > box Dedicated hardware is still faster, because a lot of the smarts are implemented in hardware, on the interface itself (things up to and including Layer 3 ACL's). So this frees up the main processor to do other stuff. Think of a big router or switch as a parallel processor. Every board in every slot has its own (fault-tolerant, usually) processor. So something like a Cisco 65xx or 14xxx switch would have dozens and dozens of processors. > 4. can a pc router match the performance of a (layer > 3) switch? Not a high-end Layer 3 switch (Foundry, Extreme Networks, Cisco). There's a reason all those carriers and NOC peering points aren't rushing to adopt Linux routers/switches. _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
