From owner-freebsd-hardware Fri Jul 31 01:09:29 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id BAA19940 for freebsd-hardware-outgoing; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 01:09:29 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from pyramid.interdomain.net.au (pyramid.interdomain.net.au [203.17.167.4]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id BAA19935 for ; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 01:09:26 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from rha@interdomain.net.au) Received: (qmail 26540 invoked from network); 31 Jul 1998 08:09:22 -0000 Received: from obnoxious.interdomain.net.au (HELO ?203.17.167.127?) (203.17.167.127) by pyramid.interdomain.net.au with SMTP; 31 Jul 1998 08:09:22 -0000 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199807310551.AAA13188@tsunami.waterspout.com> References: Your message of "Fri, 31 Jul 1998 13:51:24 +1000." Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 18:00:25 +1000 To: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG From: Richard Archer Subject: Re: Support for passive backplane chassis? Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org At 15:51 +1000 31/7/1998, C. Stephen Gunn wrote: >In message , Richard Archer writes: > >>I am thinking of using a passive backplane system with 16 PCI slots. >>This would allow each router to handle up to 64 ethernet segments. >>But I can't find much information about how these interact with FreeBSD. > > This would scare the heck out of me. I use a FreeBSD box at my >day job to route between 5 Ethernet Interfaces. While it's a fast >box, and it all works fine, I don't want to think about the bandwidth >aggregation problems you might have with 64 ethernet cards on one >machine. At that level you're not looking for a CPU to make decisions >on the packets. You want a Switch. Hi Steve, Well, that's certainly a heads-up! The problem with the switches I've seen are that they don't offer the security of a router. I really want a solution that operates as a firewall between the LANs. From what I've seen, products like the Bay Networks Accelar 1200 finish up costing over $1000 per port (that's the price in local currency here in Australia). I've costed out a solution using FreeBSD boxes (either 4 16-slot backplane boxes or 16 4-slot motherboard solutions) and either way it works out to about $500 per port. But of course $500 per port works out being very expensive if the solution does not work! > I would check out Lucent's Cajun Switch, or some of the nicer Cisco >10/100 switches that can take a route processor. The Lucent one claims >to be 10/100 on lots of ports (140 or so) and provide Layer-3 switching >(basically routing) in hardware, at wire speed. While you're looking >at $25K or so, racks of BSD machines aren't free either. $25K (double that in Australia) would actually work out being a comparable price to the FreeBSD-based system. I'll certainly follow that up. Also the Cisco Catalyst 5000 series with the 48-port 10baseT ports might work out being a reasonable price. > Don't get me wrong here, FreeBSD is great, but PCI isn't going to >handle what you want. At least not at high saturation levels for >each subnet. Just wondering, how does this building hook to the rest >of the universe? At the moment the building is still a shell :) I was going to use a Cisco 3260 with a 2E2W card with each WAN port connecting to a different upstream. (Actually one upstream and one to a local peering point.) Thank you for the advice! ...Richard. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message