I'm sure they will make it work but there a long list of issues using PCs as routers that still applies capex goes to opex. -----Original Message----- From: Adrian Chadd <adrian@creative.net.au> Sent: 21 January 2008 02:23 To: Jeff McAdams <jeffm@iglou.com> Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Cost per prefix [was: request for help w/ ATT and terminology] On Sun, Jan 20, 2008, Jeff McAdams wrote:

A Linux box (*BSD, pick your poison) running Quagga or similar will do the job at an extremely low price point.

Yeah, again, not gonna want to pass gigs of traffic through it, but the same concept does still apply.

I dunno, the *NIXes seem suddenly interested in fixing up their internal network code to try and handle 10GE stuff "better". You might find that someone decides to drop in a crazy-looking intel e1000 NIC driver at some point thats tailored towards forwarding 64 byte frames at gige rate. The commercial guys hacking on FreeBSD routers/bridges keep telling me they've done it w/ custom coding on intel NICs on decent-looking PCIe hardware. It doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility nowdays. Adrian