On Wed, 15 Jul 1998, Dave McGuire wrote:

> On Wed, 15 Jul 1998, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> >> a 386 (even a DX/40) is WAAAAAAAAAAAY to slow to route a T1.  Get a
> >> 486DX2/66 or something.  I used to drag my 386DX/40 down with just a
> >> 33.6k modem w/ FreeBSD.
> >
> >It all depends on what you expect. A dedicated 286 box will work just fine
> >as a router, with dedicated software.
> >A 386 will work just fine, it's just that it gets swamped easily, and then
> >it will throw away some data. Nobody will die because of it, and nothing
> >ought to break.
> 
>   I'd consider dropping packets because of inadequate performance "broken".

It's all relative. Every router will drop packets at one point or another.
It's just a question of where you pass the limits. TCP/IP was designed
with this in mind, and survives fine on lossy connections, but with a
degraded performance (of course).
I just don't understand how much traffic you think will be going over his
router.

> >It's all a question of what performance you expect. If it is going to
> >route for a uVAX behind, than machine will hardly swamp very much
> >anyway...
> 
>   You must be used to MUCH slower VAXen than I am.

Don't know what you're using, but personally I'm on a 3500, but the VAX
I've seen used as a router is a 6440. But once again, the machine used as
a router is not the big problem you are trying to make it.
And even if it might turn out to be, I'd say start by trying, and if it
then turns out to be a real bottleneck, then find something faster.

	Johnny

Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt@update.uu.se           ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol