Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 16:07:44 -0700 From: Andrew McRae <amcrae@cisco.com> To: dennis@etinc.com, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: The view from here (was Re: ISDN Compression Load on CPU) Message-ID: <199605242307.QAA14520@doberman.cisco.com>
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dennis@etinc.com (Dennis): >>Have I said enough bad things about PCs yet? No, I don't think so. >>There's also the issue of Quality Control - two words you'll rarely >>see stuck together in the PC marketplace. You've got SCSI controllers >>from Croatia plugged into motherboards from Togo talking to disk >>drives that were purchased during a $0.10-a-megabyte special the local >>discount merchant ran. Several dozen failure-prone variables, at >>least half of which have probably never been tested in combination. > > These are the words of your "leader"? > > Most of this is your own fault, for buying cheap unknown cards, > discouraging and ridiculing commercial vendors for charging for > things that are worth it and not giving away their work, and using > software thats been slapped together by someone who doesnt have > enough time to spend on it to make it really work well. > > All of the routers on the market are just basically PCs, in one form or > another. Cisco OS is just a hacked up unix os, so what your really saying > is that the guys at cisco write better code than you do. I think that a lot > of the people on this list would take exception to that. I have been following this thread with some interest, and it has been enlightening to eavesdrop on the various points of view. I thought the comment about `cisco is the IBM of the networking world' hits the mark in some ways, but at least cisco was not called the Microsoft of the Networking world :-) I am interested in your comment about what the cisco OS is; can you perhaps expound on this viewpoint? Is this a statement from experience or observation? Cisco's motto and mission is to make the best routers in the world, and `best' encompasses a wide range of attributes such as functionality, reliability and performance. *I* know about that the cisco code is like, because I *look* at it every day. I am not here to be an apologist for cisco, however, and if you wish to complain about price or reliability or anything, whinge to your local SE, not me. I have also looked at the FreeBSD code, and written some of it. The biggest problem with FreeBSD is not the software, but the crappy hardware - and I don't just mean badly designed or badly made, but the architecture is somewhat lacking. It seems to be getting better with PCI, and PCI is also a technology that cisco is using for their own I/O adaptors. But even then, we use a different connector, and have extra pins so that hot swap can be supported. And even then we are pushing the technology to its limit. Saying that cisco engineers write better code is a specious argument, and totally ignores the hardware area. Again, *I* know, because I work with cisco hardware engineers every day, and I know the effort that goes into *both* hardware and software to make products viable. Sure enough, at the low end it is a price war, and perhaps cisco doesn't own 75% of the market; the access market will *always* price sensitive, and not as performance and function driven as mid and high end. But on the other hand, if your access routers fall over occasionally, or you don't mind powering it off to replace or install new line cards, then it's not the end of the world to have downtime. PC's can be used in this environment, and FreeBSD is a really good fit here. For mid range and certainly high end, I can guarantee you will not be routing 100,000 packets per second on a PC, however much memory and disc you put in it :-) And for the core routers of the Internet or in a large organisation, I suspect that you *would* be fired if you tried to use anything except a serious dedicated router. C'mon guys, use the right tool for the job. Don't tell me you can replace routers with PC's; I would like to see the PC that can sustain routing of over a million packets per second like a fully loaded 7513 can. On the other hand, I have yet to see a router run Doom... > Dennis Cheers, Andrew McRae (amcrae@cisco.com) Disclaimer: my thoughts only.
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