From owner-freebsd-isp  Thu Oct 23 14:51:10 1997
Return-Path: <owner-freebsd-isp>
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id OAA00315
          for isp-outgoing; Thu, 23 Oct 1997 14:51:10 -0700 (PDT)
          (envelope-from owner-freebsd-isp)
Received: from red.juniper.net (red.juniper.net [208.197.169.254])
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id OAA00310
          for <freebsd-isp@freebsd.org>; Thu, 23 Oct 1997 14:51:09 -0700 (PDT)
          (envelope-from tli@juniper.net)
Received: from chimp.juniper.net (chimp.juniper.net [208.197.169.196])
	by red.juniper.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA18125;
	Thu, 23 Oct 1997 14:50:38 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (from tli@localhost) by chimp.juniper.net (8.7.6/8.7.3) id OAA01123; Thu, 23 Oct 1997 14:50:38 -0700 (PDT)
To: damian@cablenet.net (Damian Hamill)
cc: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Routing thru a FreeBSD?
References: <Pine.GSO.3.96.971022103105.26211B-100000@slip-3>
	<344F4A11.353C51DE@cablenet.net>
From: Tony Li <tli@juniper.net>
Date: 23 Oct 1997 14:50:37 -0700
In-Reply-To: damian@cablenet.net's message of 23 Oct 97 12:58:57 GMT
Message-ID: <82iuuoi1xu.fsf@chimp.juniper.net>
Lines: 21
X-Mailer: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34
Sender: owner-freebsd-isp@freebsd.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

damian@cablenet.net (Damian Hamill) writes:

> I think you misunderstood his question.  He didn't ask about ethernet
> switching, he asked about IP routing.

> > I doubt it. Unless there is specialized hardware involved.
> > cisco and others have invested heavily in 'silicon switching'.
> > there are more layer 3 ethernet switches out there.

In fact, Cisco has been doing hardware based L3 forwarding for several
years.  The first such instance was the Silicon Switch Engine for the
7000.  I happen to have a passing familiarity with it.  ;-)

Ob FreeBSD: The point here is that at some point, when you need many
hundreds of thousands of PPS of forwarding, normal processors just fail to
provide the necessary speed.  Note that for most situations, this is not
necessary.  A heavily hacked FreeBSD system can get around 100Kpps.  Of
course at this point, you also run out of PCI bandwidth, so you've maxed
out the rest of the hardware too.

Tony