Gigabit Linux Routers

Sargun Dhillon sdhillon at decarta.com
Wed Dec 17 23:02:09 UTC 2008


Ah, NO! Stay away from Click. It is NOT stable. Unless you want to hold 
your network together with paperclips and rubber bands, stay away.

We use Linux software routing extensively where I work. We use Quagga 
primarily. I tried XORP, and it was very interesting, but not 
particularly ready for production. For our non-Linux boxes (FreeBSD), we 
use OpenBGPd, whereas on Linux, Quagga is far more stable.

 From a hardware perspective, you guys really don't need anything 
special anymore.


Nathan Ward wrote:
> On 18/12/2008, at 3:02 AM, Chris wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>> Sorry if this is a repeat topic. I've done a fair bit of trawling but 
>> can't
>> find anything concrete to base decisions on.
>>
>> I'm hoping someone can offer some advice on suitable hardware and kernel
>> tweaks for using Linux as a router running bgpd via Quagga. We do 
>> this at
>> the moment and our box manages under the 100Mbps level very effectively.
>> Over the next year however we expect to push about 250Mbps outbound 
>> traffic
>> with very little inbound (50Mbps simultaneously) and I'm seeing 
>> differing
>> suggestions of what to do in order to move up to the 1Gbps level.
>>
>> It seems even a dual core box with expensive NICs and some kernel tweaks
>> will accomplish this but we can't afford to get the hardware purchases
>> wrong. We'd be looking to buy one live and one standby box within the 
>> next
>> month or so. They will only run Quagga primarily with 'tc' for shaping.
>> We're in the UK if it makes any difference.
>>
>> Any help massively appreciated, ideally from those doing the same in
>> production environments.
>
>
> Give Click a try - it is an alternative forwarding plane for Linux, 
> that ran much faster than regular Linux forwarding a few years ago, 
> and I imagine would still do so.
>
> The XORP routing suite supports various different FIBs, including Click.
>
> http://read.cs.ucla.edu/click/
>
> -- 
> Nathan Ward
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
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Sargun Dhillon
deCarta
sdhillon at decarta.com
www.decarta.com







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