Zebra/linux device production networking?

Wed Jun 7 10:27:17 UTC 2006

> First, a little background..
> My CTO made my stomach curdle today when he announced that he wanted to
> do away with all our cisco [routers] and instead use Linux/zebra boxen.
> We are a small company, so naturally penny pinching is the primary
> motivation.

It is primarily small companies that use zebra or Quagga or 
openbgpd or Xorp or the Click Modular Router project.
There is more than one choice so do your research.
The main drawback of all of these is that you cannot
get PCI-bus cards that support some common circuit
types and the PCI bus cannot handle switching high
traffic volumes. Many people build and sell routers
based on a PC server running UNIX. They work fine
if they are no stretched beyond the role intended.
Cisco routers are the same. Look at the limitations
of the 2500/2600 series for instance.

Some URLs of interest:
http://www.read.cs.ucla.edu/click/
http://www.xorp.org/
http://www.openbgpd.org/
http://www.quagga.net/
http://www.zebra.org/

> Has there been any discussion (or musings) of moving towards such a 
> solution? I've seen a lot of articles talking about it, but I've not 
> actually seen many network operators chiming in.

This tends to be a list focused on the cult of
the BIG IRON, namely Cisco and Juniper. The people
who use PC-based routers have their own hangouts.
My main piece of advice is to seek out those hangouts
and ask your questions there.

> Here's the article that started it all (this was featured on /., so 
> likely you've read it already).

Sorry, haven't seen these.

--Michael Dillon