FreeBSD as router - performance vs hardware routers

[Mykroft Holmes IV]

Kenneth Culver wrote:

>>As a Note, the top end routers out there, Junipers, run JunOS, which is
>>a FreeBSD variant. A Juniper M160 can route OC192's at wire speed
>>(That's 10Gb/s folks).
> 
> 
> However, the way those are set up, FreeBSD doesn't do the actual routing,
> as far as I can remember they upload a routing table to the line cards and
> transfer any changes to the routing table to the line cards, so the
> routing itself is done by high-speed hardware, and FreeBSD is mainly
> managing all the custom hardware. We did a similar thing when I worked for
> Ericsson with FreeBSD.
> 
> Ken


That is correct, the routing for the line cards is done on dedicated 
hardware. Now, they also do route via the management interface, which is 
done by the kernel.

Adam