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Router Wars
Chris Holland writes "On the heels of Juniper Networks' recent release of its TX Matrix Platform, Om Malik is giving an interesting overview of current and upcoming battles between protagonists of the Router Game, armed with their Terabit toys."
Read I did that sentence four times and then afterwards I cannot image the idea of what it means to be it.
(I think I know what he meant, that because of problems with IOS, JUNOS was more reliable, but I'm not in tune with the router market so I can't be sure. But to continue, in English:)
The analysis of market gains and new product comparisons is useless without prices: what are the MSRP and street prices for the various models? Where do the prices look like they're going for the various models? What a manufacturer is doing with its prices would tell me a lot about their strategy and how competitive they really think their products are.
sigs, as if you care.
Does this mean that the new Cisco routers are based on Intel CPUs? If I rember correctly QNX is Intel only but that may have changed. What about the new IBM/Sony/Toshiba Cell cpu? I wonder how well it would do in IO intensive work. Since it can be linked it would almost seem like a perfect fit for a BIG router.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
On a serious note, I very much like the increased competition in the router market. That's good. Nobody gains and everybody loses when there's only one real player in the game.
I would like to see router developers be a little more FOSS-friendly. Hey, I'm not asking Cisco to Open Source IOS - that would never happen - but IOS supports only a small handful of routing protocols and is woefully lacking on QoS support. Whilst Cisco hardware is very likely highly tuned to the protocols they do use, software is software and a module system would be trivial to develop. (This would not be true if Cisco routers were "real" hardware routers, but almost nobody codes in hardware unless they absolutely have to.)
Would it hurt Cisco to support pluggable protocols and QoS algorithms? I can't see how. It would lessen the attractiveness of any competing system that had some feature Cisco themselves didn't support. And if a third-party module proved popular, it would likely be cheaper to buy it than pay a development team to write it from scratch.
This goes for all their competitors, too, of course. Whether it's Juniper, 3Com, or whoever, no company has the time or the resources to develop and maintain code for all the different protocols out there. They can only support the most popular, which may not be the most effective in any given case. (Popular tends to mean a compromise, not just on capability and throughput, but also on maintenance costs, development costs, etc.)
As things stand, Linux has vastly superior packet filtering and QoS support than almost any commercial router on the market. I've not used the *BSDs for a while, but from what I'm hearing, they're comparable or even better in some areas. All this code, all this expertise, all this R&D, and the major manufactuers can't even touch it. That's stupid.
Yes, license issues would probably block any attempt to port Linux modules over. Probably, but not definitely. As in the closed-source modules in Linux argument, dynamic linking can be considered to involve two distinct programs and therefore not in licensing conflict. The BSDs would have no problems at all, regardless.
Why would Cisco care about such code? Or any of the other manufacturers? It's not up to their usual standards, and they wouldn't make money from it.
Because it weakens the argument for moving to someone else. Because third-party modules aren't their problem to support, so they don't need to care about stability. Because anything that cuts R&D costs without cutting the R&D is earning money. Very significant amounts of money.
Because most of the uber-nerds who are involved in network administration are more likely to have a Unix-ish background (and therefore have a mindset geared to extensibility) than a desktop background (where brand-naming has typically won out over technical characteristics).
Finally, because that would allow these router companies to cash in on the media-darling of the moment (Open Source) without compromising on their supposed Intellectual Property rights. Potential gain, no risk of loss, sounds a good exchange to me.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Cisco bought Procket Networks for the engeering talent that they have attracted with in the last few months, not their product. There is some speculation that Procket would never have a product, but rather being formed as a way for Cisco to recruit engineers from other routing companies. Think about it, the possibilty of having Cisco buy a start up you work for is a nice carrot to have dangled in front of you.
Of the software routers I know about, GateD went closed-source, has switched owners a few times since then, and seems to have lost most (or all) of its momentum and popularity.
Click, developed by MIT, is Open Source and under active development, but very few routing elements have been written for it. I know of no *BSD or Linux distributions that use it, either. Without visibility, nobody will know it's there to write anything for it.
Zebra, Quagga and MRT are all dead. I can't find a version of routed more recent than July 2000. Multicast routers, such as mrouted, pimd and pimdd, have been left to rot. The wireless software router AODV-UU is not so much maintained as kept on life-support. The others that I know of have long-since been buried and are now best-used as compost.
The number of Open Source geeks involved in science, research and networking is phenominal. Linux is gaining control over the top500 supercomputer list, and NetBSD keeps on setting new speed records on Internet 2. Both Linux and the *BSDs put commercial router systems to shame for the options they support, the flexibility of their packet filtering/mangling, and the level of control administrators can have. (Power... Power.... POWER...... Bwahahahahahaha!)
But with all this know-how, with all this knowledge of the fundamentals involved, and with all the obvious interest these people have in Open Source/Free Software, there is nobody out there working on a commercial-grade Open Source software router. Where routers are used, they're commercial, off-the-shelf branded products.
FOSS can beat NEC's "Earth Simulator", can turn Cray to pulp, frequently out-performs closed-source products on comparable hardware. The European Space Agency even uses a GPLed microprocessor in rockets and satellites. But nobody has been able to a software router project going.
This just does not compute. In the past, Cisco has even admitted to adding back-doors to their routers. I don't know if they still do, or if it's possible to close the holes in the older systems with a firmware upgrade. The problem with closed-source is that you can never know. You can only trust. The very people who know this and who would NEVER tolerate such uncertainty in any other area of computing - for reasons I will never understand - are totally accepting of this with their network routers and firewalls. The elements of their network most vital to maintaining integrity and security.
I'll wrap it up here, to say that I really, truly hope someone replies to this, saying "you're wrong", with a link to a live, vibrant, active Free/Open Source software routing project. That would be the best christmas present I could have.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Since it hasn't been mentioned in this thread. JunOS is essentially FreeBSD. So, you can do cool stuff that the /. crowd should enjoying like running multiple virtual routers on a laptop. http://www.lab-rats.net/v-olive.html
Being FreeBSD based, the Unix geek with no previous routing experience can learn it, IMHO, faster than the Cisco assuming no previous experience with either.
http://www.xorp.org/
I haven't had time to play extensively, but it worked well during initial tests.
Of course, some of you may run and scream because Intel, the NSF, and Microsoft have provided some funding.