> On Thu, 16 Jul 1998, Eka Kelana wrote:
> > Nothing's going wrong with using a Unix box as a router....
> 
> Indeed... didn't the old NFSNet T1, then T3 backbone use RS/6000s as core
> routers? I don't know anything about the behind-the-scenes technical
> goings on, but as a user (sharing a T1 with the other Univ. of Texas
> students), performance seemed quite good. Perhaps even better than what I
> see today (too many people on the net now ;)

Actually, before the RS6000s arrived, the NFS T1 backbone was run on
clusters of IBM PC/RTs running BSD-Reno and AOS.  The general idea was
that multiple RTs were connected on a Token Ring network and some had 1 or
2 T1 interfaces and others had ethernet.  I've got a couple of the RTs
from the old Seattle node in my basement now (idle at this time).

As for PCs running configured as routers, I've got an old 486 laptop
runnning FreeBSD routing between ethernet (3C589D) and a WaveLan (Digital
RoamAbout) segment and it has had no performance problems -- it's not
doing anything else (yet).  YMMV.  

-Doug