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

  • From: Vinny Abello
  • Date: Thu May 23 17:14:52 2002 
At 04:17 PM 5/23/2002 -0400, you wrote:


> I agree with you on that. Hot swapability for various interfaces is
> something routers obviously have over PC's.

Hot swap PCI is old news.
True, but not widely implemented in the standard PC market. If you want a server that has hot swap capability, you're likely paying a premium price for a lot of extra other features. It's not something you can typically just build yourself, and if you can you'll need a case that allows you easy access to swap the PCI cards. By the time you pay for an enterprise level server with this capability, I would rather have put the money towards a good router.



> True... unless going for 64 bit PCI at 66MHz... still it's obvious that
> routers are designed for one simple purpose and generally have larger
> backplanes to handle that.

However, $ for $, even when buying used cisco gear at 80% off from
dot-booms, a PC router will outperform any traditional router.
At what speeds though? As you get into the higher gbic speeds, a PC doesn't have the backplane to cut it. Now if we're talking raw processing power, a PC can blow away a router in calculations per second any day. :)

> I agree a router is probably more efficient in just routing packets, but in
> complex filtering or traffic manipulation/packet sniffing, a PC might have
> the edge. :)

Yes, ipfw/dummy is very very cool. Like, inducing a few 100 msecs of
latency to folks who don't pay on time :)
Hehehehe... Interesting approach. I find it more fun to just shut them off. It makes them take you more seriously. Unfortunately I would say only a small percentage of users, may 20% or so would even notice the latency issues if they were having them. They're more likely to complain about slow transfer speeds. That is even more fun and can be done on any traditional Cisco... Traffic shaping is cool but hindered by being limited to controlling outbound traffic on an interface. Rate limiting even more fun. Hmm... [exceed action drop] Why is there so much damn packet loss on my connection when I put traffic across it??? ;)

Vinny Abello
Network Engineer
Server Management
[email protected]
(973)300-9211 x 125
(973)940-6125 (Direct)

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