Bill, Vadim, This discussion doesn't really belong on this list, but since Vadim has told some untruths about gated needing more than 64MB of memory...

BSD/386 can handle full routing table with some amount of tweaking. Also, gated becomes essentially useless as soon as system starts to do paging; so it's better 64Mb or more :-)

Most of the ANS routers run 32 MB and run gated. A few have 64 MB. If we didn't have the scram utility holding it's own routing table (used to load routes into smart cards), we could probably get away with 32 MB almost everywhere. Yes - we do take full routing. The SGI I am typing on has 32 MB and runs gated and takes full routing and does full logging and I do compiles and other stuff with no problem.

Reliability of 486 platforms... closer to non-existant. ciscos do not cost $$$s for nothing. Also, ciscos are much more manageable.

The reliability of a Cisco is better, but PCs are not as bad as you say. The manageability issue, I disagree with. I'd take the BSDI box any day on that count. Just try expressing the policy on one of our major ENSS routers on a Cisco. A BSDI box doesn't need a host to tftp boot images and configs from (on the odd chance that you ever update your Cisco software or have a config that doesn't fit into NVRAM) and doesn't need a host to tftp logs to (on the odd chance that anything ever goes wrong in a network and you need logging or tracing).

There are several real-life E-1 BSD/386 routers in the Internet, though owners want to replace them with ciscos (capacity problems).

--vadim

I don't think a PC today can realistically handle even one T1 at full capacity. Also PC ethernet cards are sufficiently miserable that you can only put one in a PC and get it to use the full ethernet bandwidth. Makes a fine 56k router or a low end dial in PPP or SLIP server if you can live with one ethernet. Beyond that, the PC hardware just isn't there yet. Cisco doesn't make a laptop. :-) Curtis