On Tue, 22 Jul 1997, Tim Gibson wrote:
Funny that you would say how great PC based routers are and then in the next paragraph state that you've had to move away from them to the GRF. The GRF is a PC based router (P-166 running BSDI and an optimized GATEd). The GRF's strength is not it's routing, it's still a PC router, it's strength comes from combining a good switch, alot of buffer space, and the use of an route engine that is familar. It will be very interesting to see a production Cisco 12000 to compare performance on PC vs dedicated when an IP switch is in use.
Sorta, the GRF has a embedded P166 with 256 Megs of RAM. The GRF uses the P166 for routing, it dumps a routing table on each card. The cards then switch port to port without touching the P166. We have a few old Gigarouters, and they have a external P133 connected to them. You can pull the connection from the P133 (RMS) and the Gigarouters, and it will still switch packets. With our old PC routers, all packets were switched over the CPU, the cards could not switch port to port and did not have cool things to speed it up like hardware assisted route lookups. They GRF is not a PC router, it is a IP switch that has a internal P166 for routing. The switch can function without the P166. Nathan Stratton President, NetRail,Inc. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Phone (888)NetRail NetRail, Inc. Fax (404)522-1939 230 Peachtree Suite 500 WWW http://www.netrail.net/ Atlanta, GA 30303 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength. - Psalm 33:16