Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 13:18:09 -0500 From: dennis@etinc.com (dennis) To: Peter Berger <peterb@telerama.lm.com> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Multi-Port Async Cards Message-ID: <199602031818.NAA25391@etinc.com>
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>On Thu, 1 Feb 1996, dennis wrote: > >> Peter Burger writes.... > >That's "Berger". >> This is wrong on all 3 counts. Experience tells otherwise. A similarly > >First off, you never address the support question. Second, my >"experience" only consists of helping support a network of 2 Cisco >7500's, 2 AGS+'s, a 7000, routing a T3 to the global Internet and >multiple Ethernets, FDDI rings, and metropolitan T3s and T1s, as well as >supporting a couple of unix routers. So perhaps you're right, and i'm >just haven't had enough "hands on" experience to be able to understand >these things the way you, with your oh so much more complex network, can. > Of course, the difference is that you're comparing Apples and Oranges and I was talking about Apples to Apples. There is clearly no comparision between 7000s and PCs....and I never meant to imply that there was. When you say "Ciscos", I supposed that you were talking about desktop routers (and maybe low density 4000 series machines), since that is the real comparison to PCs (if you say "a mercedes vs lexus", I assume that you're not talking about mercedes commercial trucks vs a Lexus sport coupe). Dollar for dollar, a pentium solution is as good or better (depending on your needs). Putting a Web Server on a box may not make sense for a hub node, but for a leaf it provides a more powerful and functional solution than you can get with a "router+server" As for support, for 300 a year you get pretty good support, but it takes too long to get a really technical question answered... most of the best support is from other users' experience...just like with a unix solution. Reference the several hundred messages (maybe thousands) a day on support lists. If I can call an 800 number and get my question answered...why would i turn to a list? >> 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! I'm sorry for the confusion. I'll rephrase.... You can't put a 100Mbs adapter into a 25XX for $134., and if you could i woudnt want to. > >That's right; and you can't add a 100Mbp/s port to a PC that will >actually route that many packets for $134, or for any price. Reference > the very interesting TCP performance tests at Usenix which showed that at >>Ethernet MTUs, Pentium boxes running TCP/IP over the loopback interface >could only reach about 40Mb/s (this number went up if you increased the >MTU ... And what was the 40Mbs MTU? I think that some of the people on this list would argue that the term "a Pentium" is fairly meaningless in a vacuum....the hardware and software you run on it can make a big performance difference. Its also virtually impossible to test the routing function with a loopback interface, since in order to process the data (with a ping, or FTP transfer or even raw socket ) it would require system resources and degrade the performance. My guess is that...like most tests I've seen.... these are arguably meaningless. ie..I've got a Pentium 100 running freebsd 2.1R thats faster through the loopback interface than the same MB and kernel on a Pentium 120. Dennis ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Emerging Technologies, Inc. http://www.etinc.com Synchronous PC Cards and Routers For Discriminating Tastes. 56k to T1 and beyond. Frame Relay, PPP, HDLC, and X.25 for BSD/OS, FreeBSD and LINUX.
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