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Date:      Mon, 29 Mar 1999 20:22:54 -0500 (EST)
From:      Garrett Wollman <wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>
To:        Craig Metz <cmetz@inner.net>
Cc:        freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD as a router 
Message-ID:  <199903300122.UAA14792@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <199903292322.XAA11026@inner.net>
References:  <14079.61724.162248.667212@avalon.east> <199903292322.XAA11026@inner.net>

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<<On Mon, 29 Mar 1999 18:27:03 -0500, Craig Metz <cmetz@inner.net> said:

>   I'd love to see well-done test data to substantiate or refute this sort of
> discussion; people know what the good and bad properties of the hardware and
> the software are and can take reasonably good guesses, but they're still just
> guesses and not measured performance numbers. I know that there is data out
> there, but I don't know how good it is.

I actually did something like this a few years back.  The tests we
were running were flat-out packet generation (because we needed to
know how fast we could send packets before we attempted to receive or
forward them).  At that time, the fastest machine we had in the
hardware lab was a 200-MHz Pentium Pro with the Natoma chipset; with
the best hardware/driver combination (Intel 82557), we were able to
transmit at line rate at packet sizes down to about 80 bytes (excuse
me, octets) before the machine ran out of gas.  With better chipsets
and faster memory subsystems, there should be plenty of headroom to
forward packets at line rate, particularly if you're doing VJ-style
fast forwarding.  (Whether that leaves enough CPU to run a routing
protocol as well I can't say.)

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman   | O Siem / We are all family / O Siem / We're all the same
wollman@lcs.mit.edu  | O Siem / The fires of freedom 
Opinions not those of| Dance in the burning flame
MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA|                     - Susan Aglukark and Chad Irschick


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