High throughput bgp links using gentoo + stipped kernel

Mon May 20 00:50:13 UTC 2013

On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 11:34 AM, Nick Khamis <symack at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey Bill, thanks for your reply!!!! Yeah option 1...... I think we
> will do whatever it takes to avoid that route. I don't have a good
> reason for it, it's just preference. Option 2 is exactly what
> we are looking at.

Hi Nick,

You might get enough of a bump from something like an HP DL380p gen8
to saturate your gig-e. I wouldn't bank on stably going any higher
than that. And as someone else mentioned, definitely lose conntrack
and stateful firewalling. If you need 'em, move 'em to interior boxes
that aren't dealing with your main Internet pipe.

If you're up for a challenge there are specialty NIC cards like the
Endace DAG. They're usually used for packet capture but in principle
they have the right kind of hardware fast path (e.g. TCAMs) built in
to accomplish what you want to do.

Heck of a challenge though. I haven't heard of anybody putting
together a white-box fast path router before.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004