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OS Router Challenges Proprietary Networking
Jane Walker writes "Dave Roberts talks about Vyatta's open source router and how open source technology may soon alter the landscape of enterprise networking." From the article: "Initially, we believe that the x86 PC running Vyatta -- given the range of hardware that's available in the PC world -- can basically replace the midrange of the router market; to use Cisco terminology and model numbers, simply because it's convenient shorthand, basically from the 2800 series to the 7200 series. There's a whole host of equivalent products from Nortel and Alcatel -- but essentially in that range. I wouldn't describe it as Cisco model numbers so much as T1 branch office to gigabit LAN product categories."
Cisco and Juniper offer 24/7 worldwide support. Whether or not it sucks, this is the thing that keeps people cozily asleep at night, knowing that if they have a problem, they have an unchallengeable defense of having bought the best in class support solution (notice I avoid any discussion of h/w, because in the enterprise, h/w without support is worthless).
Yes, Vyatta talks a good game, but 24/7 worldwide support isn't something you build with a few million bucks in VC funding.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
You get OpenBGPD and OpenOSPFD all working in concert through the kernel. Oh and did I mention the price? $40.
Brilliant!
My former employer is using three relatively simple Tyan dual Xeons with a couple of Syskonnekt cards to shove 4-5 gigabits per second of traffic over the internet (yes, full routing, and over 240 peers on AMS-IX and NL-IX). Most of that is usenet (http://www.top1000.org/top1000.current.txt look for 'tweaknews') but well over a gigabit is DSL end user traffic and some hosting. Those boxes cost in the order of 7000 euro's a piece, and are about as stable as a cisco running an current IOS (not as stable as you'd like). 7 grand buys me a single linecard for a 7200 on the secondhand market, and no 7200 will do as much traffic.
Cisco and Juniper: start getting scared *now*
The first Juniper routers were "Olives", which were PC's running modified BSD. JUNOS is BSD based.
UUNET, IMHO the greatest ISP ever, first tested them in 1998 or 1999. CISCO had annoyed UUNET with poor service, so UUNET helped bring Juniper into the market. Yes, I am former UUNET and proud of it.
I found an interesting link to Olives at http://juniper.cluepon.net/index.php/Olive.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
This keeps coming up every 6 months or so. To rehash it for you:
...... AND you want to save $30k by using a #@$%#$%#$% software router running on a DELL?????
1) performance wise a 6x PCI-X motherboard is rare and commodity computers are not built for the buses to independantly talk to each other without invoking cpu.
2) feature wise you Have to have a RTOS or bad things happen when you try to implement QOS. speaking of features they have libraries full of books that talk about the *thousands* of features technologies that real routers implement (its hard to do that most companies spend tens/hundreds of millions to do this). implementing a few protocols/nat/firewall does not a router make.
3) If you actually have been involved with these things you would know:
-ds3/oc3/oc12's are not cheap... phone company bills of $100k a *month* is very common.
-a couple network engineers $100k/year each
-dedicated power/colo space/ups/generators $50+k/year
-SLA's and peering arraingment... $$$
-uptime to your customers measured in seconds of uptime (revenue $200+k/MONTH).
really, try explaining that to the CEO after the site has lost $10k/HOUR because something wonky is going on with the cpu or the memory oorrr it could be the kernel, I dunno I just rebooted the thing "cuz that usually fixes MY problems"... bye bye SLA.
--jboss