GigaRouter Latency?

Sat Oct 19 23:29:27 UTC 1996

Now I know a lot of people are going to jump on me for raising the 
latency question here, and I don't want to inflate its importance at all. 

Latency in a router is only somewhat important for most network 
applications but on some applications it has a very serious effect. If 
anyone would like to flame me, please do it in private email and I am 
sure I will find the time to get back to you :). 

How does the latency through a Gigarouter compare to the latency of say a 
NetBSD or FreeBSD box with (say) FDDI interfaces. [Ignoring the fact that 
most BSD boxes are running on a single PCI bus]. Basically I am curious 
how much advantage/disadvantage one gets by going from a Cisco to a 
Gigarouter solution based on issues like latency. I am sure the 
difference we are talking about is very slight and <2ms total, I just 
want to get an idea and I don't trust most of the technical sales 
personnel I have talked to to get a straight answer. I am very familiar 
with the latency of BSD (typical) boxes and those of Cisco Routers. 

Thanks,

-Deepak.