Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 03:20:21 -0600 From: Tim Tsai <tim@futuresouth.com> To: Valter Mazzaro <teima@kk.etx.ericsson.se> Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Embedded FreeBSD Message-ID: <19980130032021.01464@futuresouth.com> In-Reply-To: <199801300901.KAA09509@kk661.kk.etx.ericsson.se>; from Valter Mazzaro on Fri, Jan 30, 1998 at 10:01:42AM %2B0100 References: <199801300901.KAA09509@kk661.kk.etx.ericsson.se>
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You may want to take a look at the Ascend GRF. It will give you an idea on how a really neat giga router can be built based on a lot of PC technology. Since ATA Flash cards are dirt cheap nowadays (<$200 US for a 15 MB ATA Flash Card), I'd suggest putting a PCMCIA capable BIOS in Flash ROM and boot of the ATA device. You probably want to create a memory file system and have all temporary and work files go there to minimize writes to the Flash card (even though ATA Flash cards has great write cycles). The GRF, for example, has all the configuration files on a RAM disk. You have to issue a command to write the files back to Flash. You didn't mention what kind of performance range you are looking to achieve. For the low to mid-end router a fast PC with multiple ethernet cards has a great bang for the buck ratio. I've often thought of building such a box as a co-location/bandwidth limiting/firewall router, actually. If you are trying to compete in the high end, I'd price a GRF first and see if it's worth your trouble to build all the additional coprocessing module you're going to need! I am doubtful about the PC architecture's ability to route/forward packets at wire speed. PS: Can you explain what you mean by a "distributed access router"? Tim On Fri, Jan 30, 1998 at 10:01:42AM +0100, Valter Mazzaro wrote: > Hello, > we are a small group of people working on a distributed access router > prototype. > Each forwarding engine/egress port is constituted by a 200 Mhz Pentium Pro > machine with FreeBSD as Net OS. It works great! > At the moment we are investigating the possibility of implementing a > router card, i.e. a board substituting each Pentium PC. > We are trying to understand if we need to have a complete and commercial > RTOS or we can live with a BSD-like product. > As we are not so experienced in the embedded products field, I'm wondering > if some of you guys can give us an hint about it. > > 1) Is it possible to embed FreeBSD or whichever BSD on a single board > system? > > 2) Do you have any pointer to www sites, specific mailing lists, > articles, books, etc. that can help us? > > As you understand, we don't need just a yes/no answer, even because > running through the mailing lists archive it seems that is an old > question, and the answer it should be yes. What we need is to have > any indication about HOW to do it (stripped down systems, prom as > virtual disks, embedded SW structure, SW loading on the on-board > processor, an so on) > > We don't like so much the idea of leaving FreeBSD, all of us are very > astonished how well it works, but the problem is that we lack information > for this further step. > > Thanx in advance > > Valter
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