FreeBSD based router ...

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Jerry B.
> Altzman
> Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 7:31 AM
> To: Erik Trulsson
> Cc: Bob McConnell; freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: FreeBSD based router ...
> 
> 
> On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 10:08 AM, Erik Trulsson 
> <ertr1013 at student.uu.se> wrote:
> > (Putting a total of 6 quad-port NICs on a single PCI-bus would 
> totally swamp
> > that bus though, so if one were to actually use so many NICs I 
> would rather
> > recommend e.g. the Asus P5BP-E/4L motherboard. It has 3 PCI slots and 3
> > PCI-E slots in addition to the four gigabit LAN ports included on the
> > motherboard - so you can get a total of 28 ports if you fully 
> populate all
> > slots with quad-port NICs (not counting any USB-connected 
> ethernet ports one
> > might add.) It also has built-in graphics so one does not need to waste
> > one slot on a graphics card.)
> 
> And all this just to *pass packets*; if you're making real *routing*
> decisions based upon that (i.e. you're making a router rather than a
> switch), which requires that packets take a trip to the CPU, you'll
> find yourself coming to the realization that Cisco and Juniper might
> actually be on to something, there, and that ASICs might actually be
> worth what you paid for them.
> 


If it's purely ethernet-to-ethernet routing, and a lot of
ethernet ports, then he should
check into the layer-3 switches on the market and see if they
will work for him.  Much cheaper than a "real router"

Ted