Jake Peavy wrote:
On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 11:41 AM, Tom H <tomh0665@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:tomh0665@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:Have to add in my 2cents. Cost of putting a linux solution for networking in place, for anything other than a service position, time to research(or time to find a vendor to do that research for you), time to cobble a solution together (Compare a chassis based Cisco switch with your run of the mill COTS linux box, if you are requiring port density, last time I checked network cards don't come in 24/48/96 etc port densities) plus cost of building the software and possibly the drivers for the particular variant of linux you choose to use. Then, as someone else mentioned, baby sitting the linux box (patching, tuning, hard drive maint. SSD replacement if that solution is used) hardware downtime in the case of a device failure (If one of your NIC's goes dead, the box most likely needs taken offline, and possible reconfigured to accept the new NIC in the routing table) plus possible training other people on what you did to build that (Sorry, job security isn't fun when you are on call 24/7 for 200+ devices) support commercially for any problems that arise and feature requirements that may come down the pipe (being told to sod-off, ignored, or given potshots as to how to fix it, at best from any OSS group I have ever seen, but then again that is volunteers for you).> 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. How about Vyatta? They are Linux-based and claim to have the same performance as Cisco routers. They started out as software-only but seem to be pushing "appliances" more and more, like http://www.vyatta.com/downloads/datasheets/vyatta_3500_datasheet.pdfAccording to this recent post on LinuxDevices, there's also a commercial Linux middleware called ZebOS which performs carrier-grade routing:http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/IP-Infusion-ZebOS-78/ -- -jpI bet for an Indian, shooting an old fat pioneer woman in the back with an arrow, and she fires her shotgun into the ground as she falls over, is like the top thing you can do.deepthoughtsbyjackhandey.com <http://deepthoughtsbyjackhandey.com>
In my time working with ISP's, working with Fortune 500 companies networks, and military networks, I have never even once thought that setting up a *nix box for a core network service anywhere by a SOHO environment as being a good idea. An IOS based system that is tailored for the hardware is a lot easier to replace, to reduce uptime, and has the benefit of commercial support when the thing is doing stuff you just have never seen before (like http coring on a reload command on 64 bit Fedora 9 that automagically fixed itself on an update of Apache from Yum 7 months after I asked about it and was told I was obviously doing something wrong).
I have a 1750 doing VPN, that nothing in the *nix world I had found can do, in terms of set up, configuration, and remembering what the heck I did to make it work. Troubleshooting is cleaner, more concise and most definitely easier to sort (show log versus searching through all the daemon log files for Pluto, and/or whatever other program you are using) and it is most definitely not going to lock you out of the device on daemon startup, because it doesn't require the VPN to be configure before you start the process.
Finally. erase start reload is so much faster than rm -rf /etc or dd if=/dev/zero of=dev/sda.
I also think it boils down to the idea of why would you want to use a swiss army knife in order to unlock your front door instead of using the key? Even the most tuned and trimmed Linux kernel has too much bloat to compare to the entire IOS of most commercial grade networking devices, and the IOS based systems usually don't need csh/ksh/ash/bash (pick your poison) installed along with the OS core in order to be functional.
~Seann
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