Re: Routers vs. PC's for routing - was list problems?

[neil () DOMINO ORG (Neil J. McRae)]

> And that's MY real question.  Who has actually done this in a production
> environment that can speak with some real experience on the topic?  What
> can you replace with a linux box to route and run BGP for you in real
> life?  A 7200?  Bigger.
>
> I don't have the facilities to try these things out for real, and
> frankly would be worried about the uptime and finding the RIGHT PC
> hardware that isn't complete junk.
>
> So I guess it's really two questions: what is a PC capable of replacing
> as far as throughput goes, and just how reliable can a clone (or pick
> your manufacturer) be compared to a unit that was designed by electronic
> engineers to function as a 24x7 mission critical box?

I've done it in a production environment and unless money was
extremely tight I wouldn't consider doing it again. You will
save on capital expediture but you need an army of resources
to support it. When I did it, it was on NetBSD running GateD 3.x.x.
And it supported in both cases two of the largest ISPs in Europe.

There are more options now with Linux and Zebra etc but don't 
underestimate having to deal with PC issues and Unix issues.
If your running LINUX you have to be subscribed to a million email
lists to get an idea of issues etc and that takes up time. Anything
above 200M-300Mbps then forget it, but as a cheap ethernet router
its fine, and if it doesn't work you can always reuse the machines.

I strongly recommend using an AWARD bios machine - everything else 
that I used had PCI bus timing issues. [ASUS motherboards were a good 
choice also].

Regards,
Neil.
--
Neil J. McRae - Alive and Kicking
neil () DOMINO ORG