Re: GigaRouter (Was Re: Cisco as Big Brother))

[Curtis Villamizar <curtis () ans net>]

In message <199610191622.MAA06444 () panix com>, Alexis Rosen writes:
> Jim Dixon writes:
> > > Gated IMO is a good thing.  The problem is the OS/hardware that it
> > > runs on top of.  I would dred having to install something that needs
> > > a hard drive to route packets in a light-out POP.  
> >
> > You don't need a hard drive.  Use some of the money you saved by not
> > buying C***o to buy lots of DRAM.  Boot from floppy.
> >
> > Or even buy a flash-based hard drive emulator.  Or combine the two 
> > solutions.
>
> I've been thinking about this. A while ago I saw a product that emulated
> dual 1.4MB floppies in flash on an ISA card. This seemed like a good way
> to start. Has anyone actually tried this? What flash product did you use?
>
> /a
>
> ---
> Alexis Rosen   Owner/Sysadmin,
> PANIX Public Access Unix & Internet, NYC.
> alexis () panix com


Is someone suggesting that floppies are more reliable than sealed hard
drives?  In my limited experience with routers interface cards, both
the commercial and research (NSS) varieties are a lot less reliable
than hard drives but I didn't know floppies were more reliable.  ;-)

We had a lot of tape drive failures due to the tempurature and keeping
the same tape in the drive continuously (bad move!), but then we
started backing up over the net and ignoring the tape drive.  Of
course we had many routers that were not reboot for over a year since
gated and snmp proxy agents, etc could be replaced without rebooting
the whole box, unlike with the software monolith model.

Curtis
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