while arguing routing with a friend of mine, we got to the point where the number of interfaces on a router was a point of contention. now certainly routing depends not only on the number of interfaces a router has, but also on the number of next-hop gateways it need to keep track of. that said, i'd like to just ask: what's the largest number of interfaces anyone has on any of their routers? i was arguing that high end routes would probably have maybe a few hundred. my friend was arguing in terms of theoretical limits and thought it was more like tens of thousands. max interfaces? max next-hop gateways? thanks. -- |-----< "CODE WARRIOR" >-----| codewarrior@daemon.org * "ah! i see you have the internet twofsonet@graffiti.com (Andrew Brown) that goes *ping*!" andrew@crossbar.com * "information is power -- share the wealth."
This really depends on what software the router is using and how optimized it is You can easily have thousands of loopback (or other virtual interfaces) on a PC router running a free OS. The performance you will get depends on how the OS handles routing tables and interfaces in the kernel!!! As far as max next-hop gateways, this should only be limited by the limits of the routing table. On Mon, 10 Apr 2000, Andrew Brown wrote: | | while arguing routing with a friend of mine, we got to the point where | the number of interfaces on a router was a point of contention. now | certainly routing depends not only on the number of interfaces a | router has, but also on the number of next-hop gateways it need to | keep track of. | | that said, i'd like to just ask: what's the largest number of | interfaces anyone has on any of their routers? i was arguing that | high end routes would probably have maybe a few hundred. my friend | was arguing in terms of theoretical limits and thought it was more | like tens of thousands. | | max interfaces? max next-hop gateways? | | thanks. | | -- | |-----< "CODE WARRIOR" >-----| | codewarrior@daemon.org * "ah! i see you have the internet | twofsonet@graffiti.com (Andrew Brown) that goes *ping*!" | andrew@crossbar.com * "information is power -- share the wealth." | | --- Reverend Chris Cappuccio http://www.dqc.org/~chris/
Any router with an ATM or Frame Relay interface is going to have lots and lots of sub-interfaces. In provider-customer connections the usual process is to have a /30 and the interface is operating in point-point VC mode. I'm sure folks aggregating onto Frame Relay HSSI from a WAN switch are putting more than 50 T1 worth on. I'd hope not since one is paying for that T1 but oversubscribing is the game. So certainly I would expect to see hundreds of interfaces. I'm not talking about secondary IP addresses. On an OC-3 ATM -- I can certainly trunk lots of customers to a single BCN with 3 OC-3 interfaces (dumping that traffic is another problem unless you want Gigabit Ethernet or multiple Fast Ethernet full-duplex) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Cappuccio" <chris@dqc.org> To: "Andrew Brown" <atatat@atatdot.net> Cc: <nanog@merit.edu> Sent: Monday, April 10, 2000 5:43 PM Subject: Re: router interfaces
This really depends on what software the router is using and how optimized it is
You can easily have thousands of loopback (or other virtual interfaces) on a PC router running a free OS. The performance you will get depends on how the OS handles routing tables and interfaces in the kernel!!!
As far as max next-hop gateways, this should only be limited by the limits of the routing table.
On Mon, 10 Apr 2000, Andrew Brown wrote:
| | while arguing routing with a friend of mine, we got to the point where | the number of interfaces on a router was a point of contention. now | certainly routing depends not only on the number of interfaces a | router has, but also on the number of next-hop gateways it need to | keep track of. | | that said, i'd like to just ask: what's the largest number of | interfaces anyone has on any of their routers? i was arguing that | high end routes would probably have maybe a few hundred. my friend | was arguing in terms of theoretical limits and thought it was more | like tens of thousands. | | max interfaces? max next-hop gateways? | | thanks. | | -- | |-----< "CODE WARRIOR" >-----| | codewarrior@daemon.org * "ah! i see you have the internet | twofsonet@graffiti.com (Andrew Brown) that goes *ping*!" | andrew@crossbar.com * "information is power -- share the wealth." | |
--- Reverend Chris Cappuccio http://www.dqc.org/~chris/
participants (3)
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Andrew Brown -
Chris Cappuccio -
Dana Hudes