Re: OT: ISPs: Linux's role nowadays

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On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 03:27:53PM +0000, Michal wrote:
> 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
>

Yeah.. Linux also does OK on this front. Recently there has been reports
about pushing 70 - 80 Gbit/sec through a single desktop-class Linux box.
Yes, you read it correctly.

Also recently there has been reports of pushing 5+ Mpps through a single
Linux box.

You can do a lot of things with software routers nowadays.

-- Pasi

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