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Open-Source Router to Take on Cisco?
ickypick writes to tell us that CNN is running an article about the emergence of an OpenSource Router product, currently in Beta, that targets mid-size enterprise customers for about one-fifth the cost of current enterprise networking giants' hardware. From the article: "The machine runs on two Intel chips, but far more noteworthy is its software, known as XORP, or extensible open router platform. The versatile open-source application can direct data traffic for a giant corporation as easily as it can manage a home Wi-Fi network." The current release is available for download from Vyatta's web site."
This is good since I always wonder how many back doors are in Cisco routers for Law Inforcement purposes.
Cisco's biggest advantage is their support network. I have yet to ever have a client that didn't buy smartnet with any of their gear.
Granted, some of their "engineers" leave a lot to be desired, but still, PHB's like the warm fuzzy feeling.
Dont you mean FreeSCO?
and that runs on pc hardware, this appears to be on custom hardware that can actually do the job. Using pc hardware only works for a small business.. the bandwidth isnt there.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
For this to happen it must be in the right order:
1) OSS proponent founds business
2) business grows and stayes with OSS
3) Lower expense in IT infrastructure
4) 1/profit!
Really though, the hard part is winning over an existing business. Starting up with OSS would be magnatudes easier than converting.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
This could be a hit, if the costs keep down, for the small-medium business and home broadband markets. But I have trouble seeing how this will take significant market share in the Enterprise except for perhaps edge or LAN devices. For one thing, you pay Cisco, Juniper, Foundry, whomever for wire-speed implementations (among other issues) that rely largely on the ASICs and the overarching hardware architecture, beyond just the OS.
6 2391 for more info.
For the home market, there are already open-source software solutions such as for the Linksys WRT54-series wireless router, which is itself based on the GPL. See http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/print.php/35
Until someone funds an open-source chip foundry, these won't replace the core.
This seems to be alittle late to be jumping into this market. Most of the big players are starting to switch over to multilayer switching. Software routers are only needed where you need to do something like NAT or firewalling.
If your big enough to need a routing protocol like BGP, your going to need some serious hardware. Software based routers running on off the self hardware are fine for 100mbit ethernet routing, but beyond 100mbit you need some specialized hardware.
I really don't see any advanage this system has over a linux router with the usual tools(zebra/quagga, ip, ifconfig, iptables, ebtables, etc...)
God, root, what is the difference?
As for 'custom hardware', when you get to the point that you need to route 10gig-e at line-speed, then you buy 'custom hardware'. Below that, you drop in quad 100m cards into a linux/BSD box and run something like quagga (or now XORP). I'm willing to bet that not many people here have many routers that really need those kinds of line speeds, so we can all white-box it for a small fraction of the price. I know my linux (100meg) router gets a once-a-year reboot for kernel upgrades. My linux NAT at home gets rebooted every time the power goes out longer then the UPS can handle...
The only other thing that you can't get with open source is cisco hot-failover. And from the people who need that level of reliability, you can't get that from cisco either. :) To be fair, it works now, but they were selling it for quite a while in a very VERY buggy state. I'd be very exited to see an open-source router project that handles paired or triad server configurations with VIP and lockstep state updates, for true multipath redundancy. Good luck on that one, though.
You would indeed think so, and the hardware seperates a normal workstation from doing a job of a router (succesfully, anyhow).
However, the Operating System nowadays means the difference between a £600 price tag and a £1800 price tag on the 1800 series. Often the offerings from Cisco involve the same hardware but a different (more capable) version of IOS. The software really does create a large premium for the networking giants, and it's not just Cisco that this can be seen at
The game has long since moved from just forwarding packets to providing intelligence in the network. Now companies want integrated security, voince, application intelligence and application (l5-L7) optimization, QOS, high availability, etc.. none of which you'll find in an open source router. This is why the networking companies stay in business. If companies wanted cheap packet forwarders, they would have bought linksys, 3com, huawiei, hp or any other me-too commodity router. They didn't and Cisco won.
--- RFC 1149 Compliant.
Wrong.
Cisco IOS does nearly everything in software actually. Only on the big iron and catalyst based routers do you have dedicated hardware for packet forwarding. Try storming a cisco box with massive amounts of small UDP packets and see how well it copes. UDP is done in full software mode, you can't use CEF etc on UDP.
Might have changed in the two years I've been away from the networking world, but I don't really think so.
The slightly older 3600 series for example is just a normal PC in essence. RISC MIPS CPU, PCI for the network modules, flash for the OS.
What the do is distribute load instead. Same thing there, the older 7500 series has the CyBys architecture, where each line card is basically a separate router talking to each other over a backplane and a RSP to hold master databases and keep sync.
Yes, the Cisco 7600 has dedicated hardware for forwarding, but that is because it really is a catalyst 6500 switch under the hood.
Granted, many of the interface cards do a lot of processing for that media, framing etc, which keeps load of the main CPU. But what it comes down to is that IOS is quite efficient at doing what it does, which is forward packets.
If you want to learn more, I can strongly recommend the book "Inside Cisco IOS Software Architecture" from Cisco Press, ISBN: 1578701813
I found a fast warez site: http://warez.it.kth.se
Why not the hardware too? With all the talk of MS trying to lock down hardware with "trusted computing", why shouldn't the hardware be open as well?
There are companies releasing high-end networking products that are nothing more than a PC motherboard and their software. A while back, one of the load-balancer companies (I think it was f5, but I don't recall for sure) contracted with Tyan to build their motherboards, with 4 (or more ) gigE controllers, each on it's own PCI-X bus, and Tyan also sold the board to the public.
The main reason that Cisco doesn't use commodity PC parts in their low- to mid- end routers is that if people knew they were getting nothing more than a $4,000 PC for their $15,000, they'd be pretty pissed. Also, there would be that many more people trying to "crack" IOS to make it run on white-boxes, and that opens up a whole new line of revenue drain for Cisco. (Not that people don't obtain unlicensed copies for their Cisco hardware, though...)
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
For a router, its mostly in the hardware, if it can keep up with real-life data rates.
Not anymore. We've recently got a new Cisco router for around $2000 which turned out to be a box with 3 100-Mbit ports. And for separate $2000 a (separate) firewall box with 4 100-Mbit ports.I am certain that a Linux box with an opteron 1xx, couple of 64 bit PCI slots and a couple of Intel 4-port cards would be just as fast and vastly more configurable at a lower price.
2004 Cisco backdoor
2006 Cisco backdoor
I have a Cisco 3620 router, maxed out on RAM, that couldn't even keep up with my fiber internet connection. I know it is an older router, but even with a NM-2FE2W (100Mbps) network module, it could barely do over 10Mbps. The performance specs on Cisco's site says 10-20Mbps, and with IP inspection and access lists enabled, it could maybe do 13Mbps at the most. I decided to buy an IBM x300 eSeries on eBay for $250 and run m0n0wall on it. Sure as hell beats the performance of any Cisco product for that price, and also can support much higher speeds for when my fiber service gets even quicker :) It might not have all of the features of Cisco (which I majorly miss), but I like to be able to use the speed of my connection I am paying for.