vyatta for bgp

Mon Sep 12 21:13:40 UTC 2011

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Dobbins, Roland <rdobbins at arbor.net> wrote:
> On Sep 13, 2011, at 3:43 AM, Everton Marques wrote:
>
>> Would Cisco ISR G2 3925E classify as software-based router?
>
> Yes.
>
>> Do you expect it to bend itself down under a few Mbps of 64-byte packets?
>
> Especially if they're directed at the router itself, at some point, sure - though the ISR2 certainly has more horsepower than the original ISRs, and I've personally yet to witness an ISR2 being DDoSed, so I've no feel for the specific numbers.  Features also play a role.
>
> This isn't to say that the ISR2 isn't a fine router - but rather that one must be cognizant of performance envelopes prior to deployment in order to determine suitability to purpose.  One can't reasonably expect vendors to exceed their design constraints in any type of equipment.
>
> ;>
>
> One can and should test the specific performance envelope of any prospective infrastructure purchase, of course.
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Roland Dobbins <rdobbins at arbor.net> // <http://www.arbornetworks.com>
>
>                The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
>
>                          -- Oscar Wilde
>
>
>

Lots of devices can have trouble if you direct high PPS to the control
plane, and will exhibit performance degradation, leading up to a DoS
eventually.
That isn't limited to software based routers at all, it will impact
dedicated ASICs. Vendors put together solutions for this, to protect
the router itself/control plane, whether its a software based routed
or ASICs.
Now if this was a Microtik with an 1Ghz Intel Atom CPU, sure, lots of
things could take that thing offline, even funny looks. But a modern,
multi-core/multi-thread system with multi-queued NICs will handle
hundreds of thousands of PPS directed to the router itself before
having issues, of nearly any packet size.
A high end ASIC can handle millions/tens of millions PPS, but directed
to the control plane (which is often a general purpose CPU as well,
Intel or PowerPC), probably not in most scenarios.

I think its very fair for a small/medium sized organization to run
software based routers, Vyatta included.

-- 
Brent Jones
brent at servuhome.net