scaling linux-based router hardware recommendations

Mon Jan 26 22:53:54 UTC 2015

Hi,

I know that specially programmed ASICs on dedicated hardware like Cisco,
Juniper, etc. are going to always outperform a general purpose server
running gnu/linux, *bsd... but I find the idea of trying to use
proprietary, NSA-backdoored devices difficult to accept, especially when
I don't have the budget for it.

I've noticed that even with a relatively modern system (supermicro with
a 4 core 1265LV2 CPU, with a 9MB cache, Intel E1G44HTBLK Server
adapters, and 16gig of ram, you still tend to get high percentage of
time working on softirqs on all the CPUs when pps reaches somewhere
around 60-70k, and the traffic approaching 600-900mbit/sec (during a
DDoS, such hardware cannot typically cope).

It seems like finding hardware more optimized for very high packet per
second counts would be a good thing to do. I just have no idea what is
out there that could meet these goals. I'm unsure if faster CPUs, or
more CPUs is really the problem, or networking cards, or just plain old
fashioned tuning.

Any ideas or suggestions would be welcome!
micah