Re: Non-Routing BGP Speakers

[Michael Dillon <michael () junction net>]

On Thu, 27 Apr 1995, Curtis Villamizar wrote:

> > Would anyone be willing to share their experiences with (or thoughts
> > about) this approach?  Given that 64 MB of RAM for routing tables
> > woudl cost only around $2,000, this seems like a totally sensible way 
> > to build a small, multi-homed AS.  Will finding a vendor-supported 
> > system for this be ... difficult?  (I'm not exactly sure whether a 
> > BSD box running Cornell GateD counts as "vendor-supported".  ;-)
>
> BSDI works and comes with gated, though not the latest.  The Riscom-N2
> is supported by BSDI and can give you 2 56k or even T1 lines speaking
> Cisco HDLC or PPP.  I can't say I've ever tried it, but some people
> say it would all work fine.  You could also take a subset of full
> routing since you probably won't be doing transit between major
> providers.

Emerging Technologies also makes sync cards with drivers supported under 
BSDI, FreeBSD and some forms of SysV UNIX. 

They have been discussed on either (or both) the inet-access and 
bsdi-users lists in the past. Archives for inet-access are at earth.com 
(or is that ftp.earth.com) and for bsdi-users at ftp.bsdi.com. There is 
sometimes a search engine available for bsdi-users from a link at 
http://www.bsdi.com.

I got my info by emailing dennis () et htp com but you could phone
(516) 271-4525 or fax (516) 271-4814

So there are at least two possibilities for building 80x86 boxes into 
routers by using off-the-shelf sync cards and UNICES.

> with NetBSD on an older Sun.  For PCs there is BSDI, FreeBSD, Linux.

I believe that support for sync cards under Linux is fairly new. Tread 
carefully there.

> If you can afford to be dual homed, you probably can afford a router
> rather than a PC serving as a router.

There is also the question of support, spares, previous knowledgebase etc.
Build-your-own isn't for everyone but it is nice to have a choice.

Michael Dillon                                    Voice: +1-604-549-1036
Network Operations                                  Fax: +1-604-542-4130
Okanagan Internet Junction                     Internet: michael () junction net
http://www.junction.net  -  The Okanagan's 1st full-service Internet provider