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

  • From: Michael C . Wu
  • Date: Mon Apr 16 15:23:16 2001

On Tue, Apr 10, 2001 at 07:35:35PM -0400, Craig Partridge scribbled:
| In message <[email protected]>, "R
| >Don't be absurd, I can walk into fry's and pick up a motherboard with
| >64bit/66mhz PCI, some Netgear GA620's, and all the other components for a
| >1GHz computer for under $1000.
| 
| OK, so your bus has 4.2 Gb/s of bandwidth.  But, alas, you're in a PC
| so you have to copy each packet from the line card, into main memory,
| examine it, and push it back out to a line card.  So each packet consumes
| twice its size in bus bandwidth.  So 2 1 Gb/s line cards will consume
| 4 Gb/s backplane.  Assuming you can run the PCI at full rate (which in
| my experience is a big big if), you can connect two Ethernets.

I don't think you have to use X86.  Take a look at other platforms. :)
For example, Alpha, UltraSparc, or PowerPC.

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