You are right [was Re: Ungodly packet loss rates]

Wed Oct 23 13:01:27 UTC 1996

>   Why do you think it's bad that these reviews make you want to buy new
>   hardware?  Personally, I enjoy seeing what the competition is offering.
Personally - because their results differs from my opinion
totally - I'll never get some router because it's faster (interesting
questions for me is - can it hold 40,000 routes? What's the cost of
memory upgrade? How many HSSI, Serial and Ethernet interfaces I can plug in?
Can I reconfigure BGP withouth reloading total router? and so on...
No one answer. But - I get information _router XXX drops some packets if they
try to cause it work with 10 FDDI links, etc..., etc... very interesting
and absolutely useless...

And when I ask some network administrator about this, I get direct
answer - router XXX have not _telnet_ configuration option, router YYY
have not 'ip classless', router ZZZ use 85% of CPU when driving 16 Async links on
115,200 bps - its' an answer for me. But their comparation... brr.

Another example - modems. I can't speak for USA, but there (in Russia) modems
differ by their stability, interoperability, LL options, _if I can
restrict lower speed of modem connection_, _if I can cause modem don't try
too hight rate in case of bad line_, etc, etc... No one answer I can
found in the review (sorry, I forget when I read it last) - but I
read _modem XXX is faster than YYY on 20%_ - very interesting...

>   Maybe by having Bay's BCN blow away the competition on packet throughput,
>   it will encourage Cisco to get off their asses and build a scalable router
>   that doesn't need to be replaced every year.  And maybe it will encourage
>   3com to.. well... build a decent router period. :)
--- 
Aleksei Roudnev, Network Operations Center, Relcom, Moscow
(+7 095) 194-19-95 (Network Operations Center Hot Line),(+7 095) 239-10-10, N 13729 (pager)
(+7 095) 196-72-12 (Support), (+7 095) 194-33-28 (Fax)