Slashdot Mirror
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."
I love open source and all, but can a project like this really offer the same number of WIC modules?
I can plug damn near anything into a Cisco router....
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
Advocate 1: "I work at Oracle by day, but work on Vyatta by night."
Advocate 2: "Well, I work at Cisco by day, but work on PostgreSQL by night"
[awkward pause]
Advocate 1: "Pistols or swords?"
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Here's why:
1) it takes an RTOS to make things work well. You can grind all the driver code you want, but an RTOS foundation is required with lots of cache
2) only PCI-X bus gets close, and most 1Us don't have it. That gives you a real ceiling in terms of port-port throughput; don't kid yourself
3) the algorithms needed to maintain cross-bar speed are gruesome. You don't find this kind of code in anything but sledge-hammered C and assembler, and code that only a mother (and an embedded systems engineer) could love. There is very little forgiveness here.
Yes, a 1U can make a decent router. But don't kid yourself into believing that you can beat F5, Cisco, Alcatel, etc.
You can certainly embarrass them, but on the high end, it doesn't work.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
You get OpenBGPD and OpenOSPFD all working in concert through the kernel. Oh and did I mention the price? $40.
Brilliant!
I guess those BSD guys have just been playing around all these years.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
...they buy "world-class support", but having tried to use said support on occasion, I can say that I feel sorry for the world. Sure, it's better than a kick in the head, but not so much that it's worth the cost. I believe the record for longest repair ever was at the University of Manchester, in England, where a Cisco router corrupted the 1518th byte in every packet (thus only corrupting packets with a 1500 byte payload or 1496 bytes over 802.1q). Took them NINE MONTHS to fix. The first three of those, they denied there was even a problem.
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)
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*
Combining the above will give you a 3U box (smaller than a 7200) which will route (not switch) 4-5Gbit/s reliable. A 7600 is a lot bigger and a serious sh*tload more expensive. You could buy several identical boxes for redundancy and still keep some change left.
Support is the only serious objection one could have in a FastEthernet-, GigE- or 10GE-world. Luckily I don't need support. I have been supporting stuff like above for ten years so I can manage. I can even support your Cisco and Juniper-platforms as well. I can handle my monthly exabyte by myself, thank you very much.
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
Wideband makes Layer-3 switches that beat comparable Cisco routers hands down. With their nMU (pronounced "NetMU") it makes easy things easy and difficult things easy too. With their 28-port switches, you can get full-duplex, non-blocking Gigabit transfers on all ports simultaneously. And did I mention that they can even do Gigabit over CAT-3 and barbed wire? Also, if you use the nMU control your switches, none of them even need IP addresses. Good luck trying to hax0r a switch with no IP address. Throw in the fact that all their stuff is made in the USA (no off-shore customer support) and costs much less than comparable Cisco gear that doesn't perform nearly as well, and you have yourself a superior product. If you are expanding or replacing your network infrastructure, consider WideBand over Cisco. You'll be glad you did.
***Disclaimer***
I do not now, nor have I ever worked for WideBand, but we use their gear where I work. BTW, there were some guys who ran a Cisco shop in the training class I was in that WideBand offered. Last I heard, they were replacing all their switches with WideBand gear. IMNSHO, WideBand is the best kept secret in networking
This isn't the sig you're looking for...