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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.hawaii.edu!ames!hookup!solaris.cc.vt.edu!news.bluesky.net!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.dacom.co.kr!news.uoregon.edu!symiserver2.symantec.com!news.central.com!news From: tedm@central.com Subject: Re: FreeBSD router, as good as a harware router ? X-Newsreader: IBM NewsReader/2 v1.2 Reply-To: tedm%toybox@agora.rdrop.com Sender: news@news.central.com (Usenet Netnews) Organization: Beaverton Location, Peter Norton Group Message-ID: <DL06vt.4JM@news.central.com> References: <4cof7j$59@news.mistral.co.uk> <4cpjil$k1l@agate.berkeley.edu> <4crlak$1h4@web.ddp.state.me.us> Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 06:19:04 GMT Lines: 48 In <4crlak$1h4@web.ddp.state.me.us>, isdmill@gatekeeper.ddp.state.me.us (David Miller) writes: >Jordan K. Hubbard (jkh@violet.berkeley.edu) wrote: >: In article <4cof7j$59@news.mistral.co.uk>, Pete <plaker@cybar.co.uk> wrote: >: >I've been convinced that FreeBSD would be a good OS for my pentium >: >mail/web/news/ftp LAN server, but can FreeBSD on a seperate >: >386 really be as reliable and more monitorable and configurable than >: >the 'black box' option ? If so, this is much much cheeper, why >: >doesn't EVERYBODY do this instead of spending a fortune on a hardware >: >router ? > > >Just one datapoint here. I setup a bsdi PC (90 MHz pentium, lots of ram, >3com and WD cards) and got well over 800K/sec with some FTP's. > I have gotten similar figures as well, but I'll point out that you would need to do 2 FTP transfers from separate machines simultaneously to get into the ballpark, after all routers have input and output working. There are a couple reasons people use dedicated routers, here are some: 1) Lots of routers route between an ethernet/smoken ring port and a sync port, such as a V.35 connection to a DSU/CSU (like in a WAN). While I'm sure there are sync ports out there for PC's I haven't read much about them or any drivers for BSD for them. 2) Internal company networks are generally moving away from routed networks and towards large "virtual" networks using bridging. This in my opinion is being pushed largely by hub vendors who want to sell big switches, etc. So, we are seeing less internal network routing (like from ethernet port to ethernet port) these days. 3) On Netware networks, at any rate, besides IPX and IP, you usually need to route AppleYak if you have any Macintoshes out there. Because of this people have usually used Netware servers as the router for these networks. 4) A lot of routers also exist in dirty, dusty, hot or high vibration environments where a PC is simply not physically able to withstand it. That's why, for example, Cisco's save all their settings in NVRAM, and have no hard disks. 5) Routers usually have more extensive SNMP agents that allow you to look at traffic stats for each protocol, etc. 6) They also route many more protocols, like DECnet, VinesIP, SNA (ugh!) etc. By all means, if you have the need to route IP/IPX only between ethernet networks, using a server of some sort is much cheaper than a dedicated router, and is the normal thing on Netware networks, in any case.