The problem I'm facing is that if I want something from Cisco that can do at least line-rate T3, I'm looking at least $20k per router. I don't have a uber-budget, so for me, that's kind of painful when I start to need more than one plus spare parts. But, I have a high level of confidence that I can put cards in, some memory, power it up, configure it and I'm good to go.

Junpier's J-series is a BSD based platform as far as I understand it. ImageStream is *much* more affordable for me, but is Linux-based, and I fear Linux as a router and I don't know what they've done to fix the common gripes with Linux-as-router. I have no idea if either of the two have hardware assist in the cards, but my impression is that they are essentially software platforms with custom interface cards. Interface cards are important to me because I'm operating in an environment where my link to the outside world is probably going to be T1/T3.

I'm aware of Cisco IOS, then BSD-based and Linux-based platforms that are actually sold as routing products. I also know there are a billion "yay, router!" things out there. T1 cards are easy to find. The only other place I know I could buy a T3 card from is Sangoma. Maybe someone has even used it* T3 card before. Rather than reinvent the wheel alone, nanog has to contain the highest concentration of people that have tried various things and already know what will work and what won't work. I'm not looking for OS politics, just operational experience from people who have access to more money and more hardware than I do to have tried more stuff.

If my best option is still from the big players, so be it. If there's something else that's just as stable, I want to hear about it. I'm not adverse to some dirty work, but I just don't have the time right now to jump in over my head into a software router project and then fight my way back to the surface. I'm not trying to create something for educational purposes, I need something suitable for a production environment.

[I didn't know what to cut from above, so I left it]. What I've used and seen used before that plays both to the strengths of the PC as a router and addresses some of the T3 related issues -- especially if you control both ends of the T3. Using an FE to T3 bridge or FE to T1 bridge as the case may be. With a little tuning you can put a rate shaper on the PC (prior art, very stable) to not run into off-PC buffering issues. Your PC has plenty of cheap buffer. The interface to the comms network is done through a dedicated, telco or computer center grade piece of gear. Everyone here (NANOG) can agree that a 10 or 100Mb/s PC router is a no brainer and as long as you aren't using irresponsible gear, this thing will route packets forever. Putting telco interfaces into PCs has always been a little more odd, but telco to ethernet bridges are fairly standard and fairly dumb. Depending on how many of these you have etc, you can do creative things with switches, FR, etc. And cost can be all over the map. I know Pairgain used to make good ethernet to T1 bridges, and that's probably the last time I remember playing with this stuff. YMMV. Deepak Jain AiNET

Another option (if you want a pure Cisco platform) would be to buy a used Cisco 7500 or 7200 and put a T3 card in there. Those are probably super cheap through reseller channels. (<<$20K for a 1+1). A quick scan of Ebay shows a PA-MC-T3 for <$3K, a 7505 +RSP4+PS for $300 and a fast ethernet blade for $30.00. Excluding software licenses (assuming its not running something that its not perpetually licensed to something that will run the T3 card) you are looking at about $3K per T3 in HW. Deepak

On Jul 28, 2008, at 1:55 PM, Seth Mattinen wrote:

I'm aware of Cisco IOS, then BSD-based and Linux-based platforms that are actually sold as routing products. I also know there are a billion "yay, router!" things out there. T1 cards are easy to find. The only other place I know I could buy a T3 card from is Sangoma. Maybe someone has even used it* T3 card before. Rather than reinvent the wheel alone, nanog has to contain the highest concentration of people that have tried various things and already know what will work and what won't work. I'm not looking for OS politics, just operational experience from people who have access to more money and more hardware than I do to have tried more stuff.

If my best option is still from the big players, so be it. If there's something else that's just as stable, I want to hear about it. I'm not adverse to some dirty work, but I just don't have the time right now to jump in over my head into a software router project and then fight my way back to the surface. I'm not trying to create something for educational purposes, I need something suitable for a production environment.

~Seth

We use a lot of Sangoma's stuff ourselves, both for data and TDM voice applications. For the most part, it's worked flawlessly. The few problems we've had were dealt with amazingly quickly on their end - one of their developers stayed well after midnight and gave me a custom fix for a problem that was pretty insignificant to us. They support Linux a bit more strongly than FreeBSD, but both should work for what you need. Unless you're trying to install it on a 486, you'll have no problem handling 45mbps of traffic, bgp, nat, firewalls, etc. no matter what the PPS rate is. You get the full source to their drivers, the only exception is the firmware loaded onto the echo canceler DSP for voice applications. That said, they are a small company. Don't buy if you're expecting TAC level support contracts, glossy manuals or a GUI web interface to set the card up. T3 levels of bandwidth are well inside the "no longer a problem" scale of software routing. Quagga or Xorp, combined with your favorite software firewall, nat, or other goodies and you're up. If I remember right, someone made a Xorp bootable CD that had Sangoma's drivers included, so you were up and running pretty fast. If you want more specific info about anything, ask off list. -- Kevin