On 25/02/2010 14:00, Chris Adams wrote: > Once upon a time, Marcel Rieux <m.z.rieux@xxxxxxxxx> said: >> I was under the impression that, at most small ISPs, Linux had >> replaced Unix and played a central role in making things work. But >> today, I spoke to an ISP employee who told me that Linux was only used >> for Web servers and that, for routing and firewalling, nobody escaped >> companies Cisco and Juniper which provide "solutions" where part of >> the software has been integrated into hardware for efficiency >> purposes. > > Servers don't really make good routers. When you are talking about > traditional low- to mid-speed telco circuits (T1, T3), there have never > been good, well-supported, cost-effective solutions for connecting those > directly to Linux systems for routing that could compete with a basic > Juniper or Cisco (or Adtran or ...) on price and ease of use. > > When you start talking about SONET links (OC-3 and up), Linux AFAIK > doesn't handle things like protected paths and the like, and then you > also quickly pass the performance capability of commodity hardware. > Newer WAN circuits are using Ethernet, but you need OAM (which Linux > doesn't support) to properly manage them as a replacement for > traditional telco circuits. > > "Real" routers (aka Juniper and Cisco) use hardware-based forwarding > that can run at line rate for 1G, 10G, and 100G interfaces. > > Dynamic routing has always been pretty weak in Linux as well. I have a > few systems running Quagga for various purposes, but it is not nearly as > powerful and flexible as a "traditional" router. > > Now, Juniper routers all run FreeBSD, but that's only on the routing > engine (where the management and routing daemons run), not the > forwarding engine (where the actual packet forwarding takes place). > Juniper wrote all their own routing, PPP management, etc. daemons from > scratch. It is kind of funny when you spend $100K+ on a router that has > a Celeron 850 CPU and a whopping 20G hard drive. :-) > > I have lots of Linux servers, a few other old Unix servers, and a couple > of Linux firewalls, but all my routers are Juniper. I've been working > for small ISPs for 14 years, and I've never really seen a time where I > would try to push Linux into serious routing. It costs too much on the > low end and can't handle the performance on the high end. > People have had great success with OpenBSD on firewalls and routers with lots of traffic and 10GB NIC's etc -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
