From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Feb 1 09:05:29 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id JAA10398 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 1 Feb 1996 09:05:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from etinc.com (et-gw.etinc.com [165.254.13.209]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id JAA10392 for ; Thu, 1 Feb 1996 09:05:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from ppp-082.etinc.com (ppp-082.etinc.com [204.141.95.142]) by etinc.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) with SMTP id MAA19726; Thu, 1 Feb 1996 12:04:58 -0500 Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 12:04:58 -0500 Message-Id: <199602011704.MAA19726@etinc.com> X-Sender: dennis@etinc.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Version 2.0.3 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: Peter Berger From: dennis@etinc.com (dennis) Subject: Re: Multi-Port Async Cards Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk Peter Burger writes.... >Joe, > >The observation that a FreeBSD box acting as a router is "mostly idle" is >bogus; since routing takes place entirely in the kernel and "idleness" is >a measurement of the number of processes in userland waiting to run, I'm >not sure it's an accurate measure. > >The real issues are 1) A Cisco will give you better interface performance >than almost any PC; 2) the port density of a Cisco is much better, and 3) >you can't be tempted to do stupid things with a Cisco like "Hey, let's >put a web server on our router today." > >Cisco's customer response is pretty much second to none. We've never had >to wait more than next-day for spares, when we need them. This is wrong on all 3 counts. Experience tells otherwise. A similarly priced unit with a Web server will easily outperform a Cisco. Cisco's method of handling dumb serial controllers for hi-speed lines takes much away from its apparent architectural advantages, plus the use of a slow processor (which is consumed handling serial/ethernet traffic) makes any processing task (like filtering) very slow compared to a (say) Pentium solution. With a PC, basically, you get flexibility and power for a much lower cost. For Example, you can't add a 100Mbs port to a Cisco for $134! Dennis ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Emerging Technologies, Inc. http://www.etinc.com Synchronous Communications Cards and Routers For Discriminating Tastes. 56k to T1 and beyond. Frame Relay, PPP, HDLC, and X.25 for BSD/OS, FreeBSD and LINUX