nanog mailing list archives
Re: CIDR FAQ
From: peter () demon net
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 18:13:47 +0100 (BST)
Look, I really hate to sound like I have sour grapes, but this thread keeps coming up and I all hear about the PC router issue is a lot of talk about price and CPUs, but I don't actually hear any operational experience about them.
OK. Here we are. We use them in a mission critical environment. For Ethernet to Ethernet routeing with a full routeing table they are wonderful. Trying to make them work as fast serial routers is another matter. But they *do* work.
PCs have been around for years, and even 4.4+reno/gated boxes have been around as long as cisco/bgp4 boxes. If they really are such a great value, why the hell aren't "those evil router vendors" out of business in the Internet market yet?
There are a large number of reasons, from the technical to the commercial to the marketing-people-on-steroids reasons. Reason 1. Special boxes are better. In some cases. Especial for the non technically competant organisations that don't want to or need to roll there own. There are of course also Cisco/Bay Networks hackers too. Reason 2. "Know one ever got fired for buying Cisco." Remember where that saying has been adapted from. Reason 3. Marketing. "We use Cisco/Bay/router-of-the-day in our core network. We must be profressionals". Hmm.
Call me thin skinned, but this is really starting to get old. I would like to personally see the folks who keep extoling the virtues of roll-your-own solutions either put up or shut up.
We have. Thanks. We are very happy using Pentiums running NetBSD as *core* routers. Three PCI 10/100Mb Ethernet cards. Great stuff. 35,000 dialup SLIP/PPP customers can't be that wrong.
Can we kindly return this thread to: "What boxes don't do classless routing?"
We did - the CIDR FAQ started out as an ad for Cisco, some of us are trying to get some balance in this area. Regards, -- Peter Galbavy peter () demon net @ Demon Internet phone://44/181/371_3700 http://www.wonderland.org/~peter/ snail://UK/N3_1TT/London/42_Hendon_Lane/Demon_Internet_Ltd/
Current thread:
- Re: CIDR FAQ, (continued)
- Re: CIDR FAQ Stan Barber (Aug 06)
- Re: CIDR FAQ Nathan Stratton (Aug 06)
- Re: CIDR FAQ Jeremy Porter (Aug 06)
- Re: CIDR FAQ Nathan Stratton (Aug 06)
- Re: CIDR FAQ Brett Watson (Aug 14)
- Re: CIDR FAQ Randy Bush (Aug 06)
- Re: CIDR FAQ Stan Barber (Aug 06)
- Re: CIDR FAQ Stan Barber (Aug 14)
- Re: CIDR FAQ peter (Aug 15)
- Re: CIDR FAQ Jon Zeeff (Aug 15)
- Re: CIDR FAQ Paul Traina (Aug 15)
- Re: CIDR FAQ peter (Aug 15)
- Re: CIDR FAQ Michael Dillon (Aug 15)
- Re: CIDR FAQ peter (Aug 16)
- Re: CIDR FAQ peter (Aug 15)
- Re: CIDR FAQ Nathan Stratton (Aug 15)
- Re: CIDR FAQ Dave Siegel (Aug 15)
- Re: CIDR FAQ Nathan Stratton (Aug 15)
- Message not available
- Re: PCs as routers... Jonathan Heiliger (Aug 15)
- Re: CIDR FAQ Tony Li (Aug 15)
- Re: CIDR FAQ Nathan Stratton (Aug 15)
- Re: CIDR FAQ Tony Li (Aug 15)
- Re: CIDR FAQ peter (Aug 16)