Re: gigabit router (was Re: Getting a "portable" /19 or /20)

["Richard A. Steenbergen" <ras () e-gerbil net>]

On Tue, 10 Apr 2001, Craig Partridge wrote:

> Stepping back for a moment -- the answer, clearly, is yes sometime in
> the next few years you'll be able to route gigabits through a PC
> platform.  Having been down this path a few times, I think you
> underestimate the difficulty and are a couple of years too early, but
> what the heck, if you want to, go ahead and build one.  At minimum,
> we'll all learn something from your experience and hey, you might
> succeed.  Then be prepared to fight to maintain your turf against $200
> ASIC based 4-port gigabit ethernet routers... :-)

Or maybe you tried it a few years too early. It really IS that easy to
build a simple Gigabit level router with basic functionality. Your
arguements have not come close to disproving the potential to build a very
Cisco-like distributed software based networking device for reasonable
prices. If we weren't getting jerked around with gige ports on a router
costing $20,000, I don't think we'd be having this discussion.

I'm not seriously advocating we all run out and try to build an entirely
off the shelf PC-based routing platform which can compete with Cisco or
Juniper. But this proves the point that the gap in technology is really
not as extreme as vendors would have you believe, yet they continue to
sell us equipment so expensive you'd think it the chassis was made of
gold.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras () e-gerbil net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
PGP Key ID: 0x138EA177  (67 29 D7 BC E8 18 3E DA  B2 46 B3 D8 14 36 FE B6)