From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Nov 29 18:33:57 1995 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) id SAA15108 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 29 Nov 1995 18:33:57 -0800 Received: from westhill.cdrom.com (westhill.cdrom.com [192.216.223.138]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) with ESMTP id SAA15103 for ; Wed, 29 Nov 1995 18:33:51 -0800 From: gpalmer@westhill.cdrom.com Received: from localhost.cdrom.com (localhost.cdrom.com [127.0.0.1]) by westhill.cdrom.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id SAA09545; Wed, 29 Nov 1995 18:33:22 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: westhill.cdrom.com: Host localhost.cdrom.com didn't use HELO protocol To: Ron Steele cc: question freebsd Subject: Re: IPX status and routing In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 29 Nov 1995 21:22:33 GMT." Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 18:33:21 -0800 Message-ID: <9543.817698801@westhill.cdrom.com> Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk Ron Steele wrote in message ID : > We are interested in using a FreeBSD box as a dedicated router. A > couple of questions come to mind. How many ethernet interfaces can be > reasonably supported? Is there a significant performace penality > verses using a "real" router? Finally is there support for routing > IPX packets, and if so what version of FreeBSD is need for IPX > routing? 1) I dunno about ``reasonable'', but we have a machine here with 3 10b2 cards, 2 10bT cards and one 100bTX card... :-) (Okay, it's a P5-90, and the 100bTX & 3 of the other cards are PCI) 2) I doubt it. Dedicated routers can do slightly faster packet switching as they start routing when they've recieved the header, whereas BSD has to wait for the entire packet. 3) FreeBSD-current has IPX routing code > If anyone else is doing this, are you happy with the performace? Any > suggestions for ethernet cards to use in this application. Try to get well supported cards, e.g. DEC 21040 or 21140 based chipsets or something. Gary