Network Stack Code Re-write (Possible motivations...?)

[Martes G Wigglesworth]

A year, or two, ago, I found such information buried within the Juniper
website; however, upon recent attempts at further investigation, both
for learning about certifications, and subject matter for this topic, I
am unable to locate said information.  The "historic Juniper" blurbs
were very informative.  I am sure that the information is still
available, however, I have not been successful in locating it.

As for the suggested avenues of investigation, I have not had any coding
or employment experience at that level of router development so I don't
have the level of specific knowledge-base to make such an inquiry about
said reference tables.  I also do not have $10-$20K or more to purchase
a Juniper router box, so there would not much real motivation to answer
my inquiries if I were to be able to get into contact with a sales rep
with enough knowledge of the system code to have information to give me.
I am very much making an initial inquiry in attempting to get that level
of experience, hence my inquiry to the list.  I am simply trying to make
my own inquiries about the general case, so as to gain knowledge of what
routes to take to gain said coding/development experience via
experimentation, etc... (Please excuse the pun.)

Thanks for the input, though.


On Sat, 2008-12-20 at 20:53 +0100, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
> > Thank you very much for the intuitive commentary.
> >
> > Sorry for making the inquiry so specific to Juniper, however, I could
> > not think of another source that would be a good example.  I fully
> > understand how the inquiries appeared, however, thanks for answering
> > what you could.
> can't you simply ask some juniper employee? anyway - from where did you 
> got that info about network stack being rewritten?
> 
> >
> > I, as you, can't really figure out why they felt, years ago, that they
> > needed to re-invent the wheel.
> 
> once again - first ask WHAT EXACTLY FreeBSD is doing in their router?
> 
> a) just preparing tables for router chips? - then FreeBSD's network stack 
> is OK
> b) actually performing part of routing activity cooperating with ASIC's?
> if so - rewriting/modifying network stack was needed for sure.
>