*BSD News Article 59411


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD router, as good as a harware router ?
Date: 17 Jan 1996 22:35:13 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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References: <4cof7j$59@news.mistral.co.uk> <4cpu39$sft@uriah.heep.sax.de> <k8d98kgn9t.fsf@slbh03.bln.sel.alcatel.de>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
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blume_h@slbh03.bln.sel.alcatel.de (H. Blume von Contributed) writes:

> interestingly, ANS seems to use IBM RS6000 with some gated as routers
> for two to three 45Mbps plus FDDI interfaces. 

This ain't the question.  The problem is, hardware routers start
analyzing an incoming packet for its destination address as soon as
the header arrived at the NIC, and so they have the chance to route it
before the entire packet went in.  This is something you cannot
achieve with the traditional NIC architecture used in a Unix machine.
For an FDDI interface, this might get you 80 Mbps, as opposed to the
`lame' 45 Mbps of your Unix solution.  (Or, translated to the standard
Ethernet, 800 kbps for a hardware router, as opposed to 400 kbps for a
Unix-based solution.)

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)