sell shell accounts?

Tue Jul 23 17:11:48 UTC 1996

> Subject: Re: sell shell accounts?
> To: freedman at netaxs.com (Avi Freedman)
> Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 16:34:27 -0500 (CDT)
> From: "Karl Denninger, MCSNet" <karl at mcs.com>
> Cc: vansax at atmnet.net, richards at netrex.com, agislist at interstice.com,
>         nanog at merit.edu
> 	[...]
> > The question is:  Will there be routers available that can make IP
> > routing decisions based on 40-60kroutes and move 2-3 OC3s worth of 
> > bidirectional traffic?  ...
> > Avi
> 
> Uh, yes.  Like today.
> 
> See NetStar (recently acquired by ASCEND).
> 
> Their hardware does nothing *slower* than DS-3 right now, and updates the
> route forwarding table 20x/second. :-)
> 
> This thing is a monster, and will make the so-called "state of the art"
> 7513s look like dogmeat when in full production (presuming the BGP issues
> get completely resolved).

I think there are a number of measures, beyond the speed of the interfaces,
which are important when thinking about fast boxes:

o	Aggregate bandwidth of the box in bps.

o	Aggregate bandwidth of the box in packets per second.

o	Amount of buffering in box; (can TCP gracefully back off?)

o	And, a whole pile of specific, often implementation-
	dependent measures, regularly discussed on this list.

Some boxes do very well on some of these measures, but not too well on
others.  An extreme example is a HIPPI switch: really fast interfaces
(800 or even 1600 Mbps), lots of aggregate bandwidth (gigabits/sec),
but almost no buffering and not good for more than a few hundred or
a few thousand packets per second, (although the attached hosts
often are responsible for much of this limitation).  Also, things
go much better if the HIPPI hosts are in the same room. Nonetheless,
they are really fast based on select measurements...

-tjs

By the way, I like the NetStar box and wish them well.