At 09:59 AM 3/26/2008, you wrote:
Is there a multiport card out there on to which some of the forwarding responsibilities can be offloaded? Perhaps the CPU doesn't need to see every packet that arrives on the machine.
Am I the only person who has heard of Google?
It didn't take me long to find this wiki page http://www.bro-ids.org/wiki/index.php/ClusterFrontends for an Opensource Intrusion Detection System that lists various 10G cards for Linux and a couple of FPGA cards so that you can roll your own ASICs. Anyway, this one http://www.lewiz.com/talon3220.html has two ports and claims to reach 8.8 Gbps with 1500 byte packets.
People rolling their own router are not the only ones who want to do 10G on Linux.
Anyone who wants to roll your own more advanced apps on Linux without reinventing the wheel may want to check out my friend's company: http://www.bivio.net/products/bivio7000.htm Even with their specialized hardware platform, bus, and extensive tuning, they only get 10Gb/s throughput on the dual or quad 10G modules. However you can do 100,000 line ACLs at that speed. It is built for a different application than core routing. However, an XMR or Sup720 will still be a lot cheaper and give better performance. -Robert Tellurian Networks - Global Hosting Solutions Since 1995 http://www.tellurian.com | 888-TELLURIAN | 973-300-9211 "Well done is better than well said." - Benjamin Franklin