PPPoE server (high traffic in WDM network)

[Nikos Vassiliadis]

Michelle Konzack wrote:
> I am ongoing to install a CWDM (1GE) and DWDM  (10GE)  network  for  the
> Alvarion BreezeACCESS VL (38 base stations) and more then  200  Iskratel
> FTTH DSLAMS of 96 ports (each with 100MBit, but only one  1GE  Upstream)
> each.

So, you'll have 96*200 possible PPP clients. How many concurrent PPP
sessions do you care to support?
And more importantly, how much aggregate bandwidth?

> What I now need are a PPPoE Severs (round-robin and loadbalancing) which
> must work using FreeRadius and PostgreSQL.

Don't understand what you mean round-robin and loadbalancing?
Read below.

> There was someone on the <debian-isp> which  has  suggested  me  to  use
> FreeBSD, because the PPPoE it is already build to  authenticate  against
> Radius.

FreeBSD has a RADIUS library in base. The two notable users of libradius
are ppp and net/mpd. The only choice in a ISP environment I think is the
net/mpd5 port. Read the outline here:
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/url.cgi?ports/net/mpd5/pkg-descr

It is very good and is actually used in large setups.

> So, what I like to know is, if I have a 1GE and 10GE network,  how  many
> clients can  one  PPPoE  Server  handel  and  what  are  the  CPU/Memory
> requirements?

Can't reply, but keep in mind that filling a 10GE pipe is
a hard task on its own.

I *think* having more low fidelity BRASs, will serve your
needs better that a few high fidelity ones.

> 
[snipped]
> 
> Note 1: Even if I use a Sun Fire, I would prefer a microBSD
>         running from an industrial SD/CF card.

MicroBSD seems OpenBSD based. Can't comment on this.

You can try NanoBSD and TinyBSD which are FreeBSD based and I
believe can fit the bill. These two run with their filesystems
read-only mounted which is ideal for flash memories.

Nikos