Thanks to the list again. There's lots more options than I'd considered. I think it's likely that I'll stick with what I know, which is Linux not FreeBSD and Quagga. The lack of a need to learn new stuff is the my main motivation behind this because I'm unlikely to break things as frequently. One final quick question on the NICs if I can. Following Mike's suggestion about specific Intel chipsets (82575 or 82576) it looks like it's much easier to source the chipsets mentioned by David (82571EB). If these NICs are embedded on the motherboard is it going to be of disadvantage in terms of performance ? I take the point of the interrupts being the key, kindly thrown into the mix by Eugeniu. A nice man called John mailed me off list and mentioned this off-the-shelf build. On that note does anyone have any experience of Lannerinc's appliances mentioned above by Ingo or John's suggested RouterBoard: "the 1000 series seems good, just short on ram on the basic spec. At sub £500 notes, it's cheaper than buying a basic server and it's designed to do the job you need. http://www.routerboard.com/prices.html". Both appliances seem to perform well in the throughput tests. Now to look at very affordable layer 2, Gigabit 3com switches with good pps. Chris