>> I have 2 GigE lines from different providers balanced via BGP with
>> full
>> routes from both providers. Currently, these are running through a
>> Linux/Quagga/Iptables router/firewall with a P4 3.2 GHz. The
>> distro is
>> Gentoo, and we've stripped it down quite a bit.
>>
>> We're pushing streaming video, so it's almost all outbound traffic by
>> about a 30:1 factor, and our average packet size is quite large -
>> around
>> 1200 bytes. At the moment, when we hit about 350Mbps, the router
>> gets
>> to ~30% CPU usage, and it appears that we stop being able to pass all
>> the traffic at full speed. I don't see packet loss, but our traffic
>> graph flattens a good bit. At those rates, we also start to see
>> crashing, but we haven't been able to figure out the exact cause of
>> those either.
>>
>> So, long story short, I need a new router. We've looked at Cisco,
>> etc.
>> and for what we're doing, it looks like we need a carrier class
>> router.
>> I can get a decked out 12008 for about k, but I'd rather not spend
>> that much, or use the 2 feet of rack space.
>>
>> I've used OpenBSD/PF for firewalls in the past, and loved them, so
>> I'd
>> like to use it for a router if it can handle what we need.
>> Basically, I
>> need to be able to saturate both of those GigE lines. I'm willing to
>> buy the brand-newest hardware - the PCI express bus should be able
>> to do
>> 2.5 Gbps, but I can't find anything that says I can push that much
>> through software.
>
> well... "it depends".
> we have a router at a customer that I have seen peaking above 750
> MBit/s, and that was with relatively "mean" traffic (i. e. not all
> nice
> big packets). so I'd say there is a realistic chance to get reasonably
> close (and if everything else fails, you can still split outgoing over
> two or so).
> naturally, that requires somewhat carefully selected hardware, and
> these are ones of the very few machines I run where we do not go for
> GENERIC.* for a reason.
>
> --
> Henning Brauer,
hb@bsws.de,
henning@openbsd.org
> BS Web Services,
http://bsws.de
> Full-Service ISP - Secure Hosting, Mail and DNS Services
> Dedicated Servers, Rootservers, Application Hosting - Hamburg &
> Amsterdam
>
