From owner-freebsd-net Mon Mar 29 17:23:32 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Received: from khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu (khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu [18.24.4.193]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D234014E8A for ; Mon, 29 Mar 1999 17:23:27 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu) Received: (from wollman@localhost) by khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id UAA14792; Mon, 29 Mar 1999 20:22:54 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from wollman) Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 20:22:54 -0500 (EST) From: Garrett Wollman Message-Id: <199903300122.UAA14792@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> To: Craig Metz Cc: freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD as a router In-Reply-To: <199903292322.XAA11026@inner.net> References: <14079.61724.162248.667212@avalon.east> <199903292322.XAA11026@inner.net> Sender: owner-freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org < 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 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-net" in the body of the message