FreeBSD based router ...

[Bob McConnell]

From: Jerry B. Altzman
> On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 10:08 AM, Erik Trulsson
<ertr1013 at student.uu.se> wrote:
>> (Putting a total of 6 quad-port NICs on a single PCI-bus would
totally swamp
>> that bus though, so if one were to actually use so many NICs I would
rather
>> recommend e.g. the Asus P5BP-E/4L motherboard. It has 3 PCI slots and
3
>> PCI-E slots in addition to the four gigabit LAN ports included on the
>> motherboard - so you can get a total of 28 ports if you fully
populate all
>> slots with quad-port NICs (not counting any USB-connected ethernet
ports one
>> might add.) It also has built-in graphics so one does not need to
waste
>> one slot on a graphics card.)
> 
> And all this just to *pass packets*; if you're making real *routing*
> decisions based upon that (i.e. you're making a router rather than a
> switch), which requires that packets take a trip to the CPU, you'll
> find yourself coming to the realization that Cisco and Juniper might
> actually be on to something, there, and that ASICs might actually be
> worth what you paid for them.
> 
> YMMV, HTH, HAND.

I don't need that many Ethernet ports, but I do need most of those PCI
slots. I was unable to locate a box with more than four slots and a
warranty that was acceptable to our Production group. I'm still not sure
about the warranty or that we can buy it in a case with power supply.
But at least I have a vector to resume my search.

Thanks,

Bob McConnell