Re: You are right [was Re: Ungodly packet loss rates]

[Jon Green <jon () netins net>]

On Wed, 23 Oct 96 17:01:27 +0400, alex () relcom eu net writes:
> >   Why do you think it's bad that these reviews make you want to buy new
> >   hardware?  Personally, I enjoy seeing what the competition is offering.
> Personally - because their results differs from my opinion
> totally - I'll never get some router because it's faster (interesting
> questions for me is - can it hold 40,000 routes? What's the cost of
> memory upgrade? How many HSSI, Serial and Ethernet interfaces I can plug in?
> Can I reconfigure BGP withouth reloading total router? and so on...
> No one answer. But - I get information _router XXX drops some packets if they
> try to cause it work with 10 FDDI links, etc..., etc... very interesting
> and absolutely useless...

I wouldn't say it's absolutely useless.  Your router sales rep or SE can
tell you the features of the router, and you can verify those features 
yourself.  The point where I stop necessarily believing my sales rep is
when it comes to performance, and that's when independent side by side
testing is useful.

As for speed, it may not be an issue with you- yet.  Anyone running an
OC-3 Internet backbone should be *very* concerned about speed, though.
They should also be concerned about scalability.  Performance is not
the only factor to consider when buying a router (and you'll note the
Network World article considered a lot more than just performance), but
it is definitely something to consider.  Remember, a lot of the current
scaling problems the Internet is having is because people use routers that
look pretty and have nice software features, but have dismal hardware.
"It can hold 40,000 routes, but if we get up to 50,000 I'll have to buy
a new router because this one can't hold any more memory."

In short, when spending the money for a high-end router, NO information
is useless.

-Jon

     -----------------------------------------------------------------
    *      Jon Green            *   Wide-Area Networking Technician   *
   *     jon () netINS net         *   Iowa Network Services, Inc.        *
  *  Finger for Geek Code/PGP   *   312 8th Street, Suite 730           *
 *  #include "std_disclaimer.h" *   Des Moines, IA 50309                 *
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -