On Wed, 22 May 2002, Andy Dills wrote:
From the number of personal replies I got about these topics, it seems like many people are interested in sharing information about how to do routing on a budget, or how to avoid getting shot in the foot with your Cisco box.
Routing on a budget? Dude, you can buy a 7200 for $2 grand. Why bother with a linux box? Heh, at least use FreeBSD :)
Before the dot com implosion, they weren't nearly that inexpensive. The average corporate user will also need smartnet (what's that on a 7200, a K or a few per year?) for support, warranty, and software updates. Some people just don't appreciate being nickled and dimed by cisco and forced to either buy much more router than they need, or risk ending up with another cisco boat anchor router when the platform they chose can no longer do the job in the limited memory config supported. I have a consulting customer who, against my strong recommendation, bought a non-cisco router to multihome with. It's PC based, runs Linux, and with the exception of the gated BGP issue that bit everyone running gated a few months ago, has worked just fine. It's not as easy to work with in most cases, but there are some definite advantages, and some things that Linux actually makes easier. They'd initially bought a 2621 when multihoming was just a thought, and by the time it was a reality, 64mb on a 2621 couldn't handle full routes. The C&W/PSI depeering (which did affect this customer, as they were single homed to C&W at the time and did regular business with networks single homed to PSI) was proof that without full routes, you're not really multihomed. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jon Lewis *jlewis@lewis.org*| I route System Administrator | therefore you are Atlantic Net | _________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________