Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 01:13:50 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com>, "Bara Zani" <bara_zani@yahoo.com>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: DSL PPPoE with 2 NICs Message-ID: <000f01c16f48$2ba13c40$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <021c01c16f44$aded3db0$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: Anthony Atkielski [mailto:anthony@atkielski.com] >Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2001 12:49 AM >To: Ted Mittelstaedt; Bara Zani; freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: Re: DSL PPPoE with 2 NICs > > > >I have found in my existing career that the story you tell is >misleading. Both >companies ultimately spent about the same amount of money on their networking >solutions. East Electronics spent more money, actually, because not only did >they buy more expensive hardware right up front, but they had to >find and pay a >far more expensive administrator to run it; people with extensive experience >with Cisco routers are far more expensive than people with no experience with >Cisco routers. The idea that you have to pay a lot of money for an admin to configure a Cisco router is baloney. It's what the people like New Horizons like to have you believe because they make a ton of money off of running poor saps through their $500-a-pop Cisco training classes. I've configured at least 20 different manuacturer's routers, some of it is stuff that would make your hair stand on end. Cisco IOS is the easiest router operating system to use and the most well-documented in the world. All Cisco documentation for all their products is online and they have written an enormous number of guides for new users. They explain to the nth degree every facet of their products. Any network admin that isn't a fat, lazy-ass can learn to configure a Cisco router with little effort. And, if your so lazy that you can't even do that, you can take the lazy way out and buy a $300-per-year service contract from Cisco, hang a modem off the console connection, and call up Cisco TAC and open a trouble ticket and they will do it for you. Sheesh. > >Cheap doesn't equal insecure. True in the overall scheme of things. Very untrue when commercial products are involved. Cheap routers generate less money for the manufacturer than expensive routers. The manufacturer who makes less money cannot afford to pay as high salaries. The most experienced people in the business generally tend to work for the most money. The less experienced people tend to make mistakes more and not produce as good quality work. Thus, while it's not an absolute, overall your going to find that cheaper commercial products are not as good quality. Also another thing your going to find is that the technology companies that don't make that much money are more liable to release products that they later orphan. They are also less likely to be profitable and more likely to go bankrupt. > >> Specialized hardware routers came about later, and >> to this day there's still many, many ISP's running >> BGP4 on PC's with serial lines coming in to them. > >If it weren't for specialized hardware routers, the Internet would >have ground >to a halt long ago. > I doubt that anyone looking at the difference between use of FreeBSD as a router and use of a hardware router is going to be running an Internet backbone router. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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