FBSD 1GBit router?

[Erik Trulsson]

On Sat, Mar 01, 2008 at 01:27:46PM -0800, Barney Cordoba wrote:
> 
> --- Ingo Flaschberger <if at xip.at> wrote:
> 
> > Dear Barney,
> > 
> > > It seems absolutely ridiculous to buy such
> > hardware
> > > and not install a PCIx or 4x PCIe card for another
> > > $100. or less. Saying a 1x is "fast enough" is
> > like
> > > saying a Celeron is "fast enough".
> > 
> > The box is a small 1HE appliance and can boot from a
> > CF-Card.
> > I trust them more than a "al cheapo" pc.
> > 1x axiomtek NA-820
> > 1x P4 3Ghz cpu
> > 1x 1gb ddr2
> > ---
> > 850eur without taxes.
> > 
> > A good chipset, good cpu, good ram, good harddisk,
> > god powersupply has 
> > same price.
> > And don't forget that in exchanges you pay for each
> > HE.
> > 
> > And back to 1x is not fast enough:
> > There are no 1gbit single port network cards that
> > support more than 1 
> > lane, even if you plug it into a 16 lane slot.
> > (and I'm not talking about 10gbit cards; if you have
> > 10gbit upstream you 
> > have enough $$ to buy good gear)
> 
> Ok, well I've never seen a router with 1 port.  I
> thought we were talking about building a router? 

He did not say anything about a single port router.
He talked about single port network cards.  You can
use more than one of them when building a router.

> 
> The lack of PCIe cards is a good reason to consider a
> PCIX machine.

What lack of PCI-E cards?  These days there are quite a
few to choose between.

> On the systems that we have, the 1x PCIe
> ports are a lot slower than a PCI-X card in the slot.
> 
> You need 4Gb/s of throughput to handle a gigablt
> router. (1 GB/s full duplex times 2).  1x is 4Gb/s
> maximum. In my view, you always need twice the
> bandwidth on the bus to avoid contention issues.

What contention issues?  With PCI-E each device is essentially on its own
bus and does not need to contend with other devices for bandwidth on that
bus.

A PCI-E 1x connection provides more bandwidth than one gigabit ethernet
connection can use.




-- 
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr1013 at student.uu.se