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Linux To Power Super Router

Posted by CowboyNeal on

VE3OGG writes "While Cisco might not be shaking in its multi-billion dollar booties, a couple of network experts have decided to see if they can come up with a possible alternative to Cisco. Termed 'Open Linux Router,' and joining such other ambitious projects as the Extensible Open Router Platform (XORP), the Open Linux Router project aims to compete in the realms of Cisco routers and PBX. Some of the features include SSL web interface, serial console, wireless support, VLAN support, and packet filtering."

4 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Please fix summary by MichaelSmith · · Score: 4, Informative

    SOme fo the features
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    http://michaelsmith.id.au
    1. Re:Please fix summary by operato · · Score: 3, Informative

      how is this offtopic? people should fix these things so they don't bug the hell out of the little guys like this one.

  2. Other routers by Toreo+asesino · · Score: 4, Informative

    For what it's worth, Linux already powers all the NetGear DG routers at least(Wireless, LAN) etc, and I have to say they work very well.

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    throw new NoSignatureException();
  3. Cisco's stuff isn't that great... by blargh-dot-com · · Score: 3, Informative

    We've had a huge number of problems with Cisco's stuff, and unfortuantely are basically locked into Cisco for everything.

    Cisco IOS is badly fragmented across Cisco's different product lines. Entire command sets are different for no easily acceptable reason (i.e. commands that do the same thing are named different, or have their parameters in a different order, or a different format). Their SNMP support is absolutely pathetic (no Q-BRIDGE-MIB on anything, they use idiotic community indexing, SNMPv3 has more bugs than I care to think about (contexts (which they use for community indexing in SNMPv3) barely work, and you can't wildcard them).

    Their software-only platforms are almost as bad. ACS is notorious for having absolutely no useful diagnostics. (Someone can't authenticate against your LDAP server? Good luck figuring out why...) CallManager isn't quite so bad, except its backup software locks up every week or so and keeps future backups from running until we get in and kill the task. All their Java interfaces require /different/, /conflicting/ versions of Java - one may require 1.4 and nothing else will work, another will require 1.5... and nothing else will work. (Fortuantely they're getting away from Java for their web-based front ends and just going with straight web pages).

    Their hardware is OBSCENELY expensive. Our pricing is under NDA, but its still stupid, stupid expensive.

    Their technical support is horrid - we groan every time we have to open a TAC case cause we know we're going to waste at least two hours with some idiot before we finally get bumped to someone who actually knows what all the funny little acryonyms in our cases stand for. We have been flat out lied to by TAC on numerous cases, as well.

    But, they're Cisco, and the Powers That Be know the word "Cisco", and have seen it around a while, so we go with it.