Re: scaling linux-based router hardware recommendations

[Oliver Garraux <oliver () g garraux net>]

One thing to note about Ubiquiti's EdgeMax products is that they are not
Intel based.  They use Cavium Octeon's (at least that's what my EdgeRouter
Lite has in it).

Oliver

-------------------------------------

Oliver Garraux
Check out my blog:  blog.garraux.net
Follow me on Twitter:  twitter.com/olivergarraux

On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 4:18 PM, Joe Greco <jgreco () ns sol net> wrote:

> > I know that specially programmed ASICs on dedicated hardware like Cisco,
> > Juniper, etc. are going to always outperform a general purpose server
> > running gnu/linux, *bsd... but I find the idea of trying to use
> > proprietary, NSA-backdoored devices difficult to accept, especially when
> > I don't have the budget for it.
> >
> > I've noticed that even with a relatively modern system (supermicro with
> > a 4 core 1265LV2 CPU, with a 9MB cache, Intel E1G44HTBLK Server
> > adapters, and 16gig of ram, you still tend to get high percentage of
> > time working on softirqs on all the CPUs when pps reaches somewhere
> > around 60-70k, and the traffic approaching 600-900mbit/sec (during a
> > DDoS, such hardware cannot typically cope).
> >
> > It seems like finding hardware more optimized for very high packet per
> > second counts would be a good thing to do. I just have no idea what is
> > out there that could meet these goals. I'm unsure if faster CPUs, or
> > more CPUs is really the problem, or networking cards, or just plain old
> > fashioned tuning.
>
> 10-15 years ago, we were seeing early Pentium 4 boxes capable of moving
> 100Kpps+ on FreeBSD.  See for example
> http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/polling/
>
> Luigi moved on to Netmap, which looks promising for this sort of
> thing.
> https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/atc12/atc12-final186.pdf
> I was under the impression that some people have been using this for
> 10G routing.
>
> Also I'll note that Ubiquiti has some remarkable low-power gear capable
> of 1Mpps+.
>
> ... JG
> --
> Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
> "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and]
> then I
> won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail
> spam(CNN)
> With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many
> apples.