I agree with you on that. Hot swapability for various interfaces is something routers obviously have over PC's.
Hot swap PCI is old news.
True... unless going for 64 bit PCI at 66MHz... still it's obvious that routers are designed for one simple purpose and generally have larger backplanes to handle that.
However, $ for $, even when buying used cisco gear at 80% off from dot-booms, a PC router will outperform any traditional router.
I agree a router is probably more efficient in just routing packets, but in complex filtering or traffic manipulation/packet sniffing, a PC might have the edge. :)
Yes, ipfw/dummy is very very cool. Like, inducing a few 100 msecs of latency to folks who don't pay on time :) -- Alex Rubenstein, AR97, K2AHR, alex@nac.net, latency, Al Reuben -- -- Net Access Corporation, 800-NET-ME-36, http://www.nac.net --