On Thu, 7 Mar 1996 22:20:36 -0500 (EST) 
 "Alec H. Peterson" <chuckie@panix.com> wrote:

> 
> I beg to differ on this point.  First of all, the routing updates that
> are traveling over the net make up a very small fraction of the total
> amount of data being sent over the 'net.  

I'm not saying they can't deliver the data. I know that they can.

> 
> As far as cisco's not being able to handle the updates, I think it has
> been displayed that they can handle that kind of load quite well.
> Granted re-calculating routes does take a good chunk out of a CPU,
> most of the backbone routers nowadays can handle it without much
> trouble.

So why is it that esteemed people such as Sean Doran are pleading with people
to use CIDR blocks and to redude the number of advertised routes that
are announced to the rest of the world? I'll tell you. The routers on the
bigger backbones melt down under a high amount of updates, I've seen Sprint,
and BTNet fall over totally because of routeing table updates.

> 
> >NetBSD however can ;-) 
> 
> No argument there, although I think that as far as handling routing
> updates goes, it is pretty dependant on the CPU in the machine, as
> well as the bus speed.
> 

With a P-90 and 32M of ram running NetBSD it is possible to run gated and
take a full routeing table. Do a traceroute to domino.org and you will
pass though Demon Internet, whos entire backbone is based on NetBSD. No 
Ciscos. It works very well and is a hell of alot cheaper than a 7000. 
However there is yet to be a stable SYNC PPP and HDLC combination
for NetBSD that can drive T1 speeds, which sucks.

RISCCOM: Are you out there? PLEASE PLEASE do a driver for NetBSD!

Neil.
--  
Neil J. McRae                                 DNS: Domino Network Services
neil@domino.org         NetBSD/sparc: 100% SpF (Solaris protection Factor)   
  Free the daemon in your computer!