Dual/Quad 1Ghz PIIIs, anyone?
For routers, single fast CPU's, fast ram and fast PCI buses work wonders, hence my liking the Alpha processor systems. Mostly because of a really good PCI bus. On other lists the discussions get real technical as to why, and a dual 800+ system is fast enough it does not matter... but unless the code (Zebra/Gated/Routed) is designed to use multi-processors, it does not help the router deamon. It will free up resources for other tasks. In playing around I summarize the differences as: *nix boxen routers: Decent Hardware, Great OS, more than enough CPU/RAM cheap to make up for differences in most cases. Purpose built systems: GREAT hardware, Minimal OS tuned for the application at hand (routing). Funny thing is, I am typing this on a roof, using a 200mhz Linux boxen with 2 nics used for wireless network routing... using SSH and Xwindows while it routes packets for 2.4ghz DSSS and some 23ghz (10mbps fdx) analog traffic. It's a great night to be babysitting the network... I think as hardware and software evolve over time, all of these arguments will fade into volatile ram.