Re: [school-discuss] Alternatives to Cisco Routers (WAS: Success!)

[Cameron Miller <cdmiller@adams.edu>]

Richard Wraith wrote:
>>I've got to brag about this, and this group seems like the ones that
>>would care.
>>
>>We had an ethernet card die in a Cisco 3600 series router today. I
>>don't have anything bad to say about the quality of Cisco products,
>>but they are a bit *ahem* pricy, and specialty cards like this can't
>>be bought off the shelf at your local computer store (so we're
>>looking at a minimum of 1 week to get it replaced).
>>
>>Thanks to Linux (FREESCO), I replaced a big expensive Cisco router
>>with a 5 year-old PC that was sitting in a storage cabinet.
>>
> 
> Since the very beginning of our network in 1996 we have had a FreeBSD or
> Linux machine as our router. We looked at Cisco and many other
> alternatives and none could compare for $$ versus performance.
> 
> We have a very busy network with 13 class C subnets yet our FreeBSD and
> now Linux router/firewall has barely ever shown a significant load
> average. Routing performance has never been an issue.
> 
> At the minimum you need two network cards in the box - one for the
> external link and one for the internal. We have four cards in our machine
> as we have physically as well as logically subdivided our network.
> 
> Configuration has been no harder than for a Cisco box and yet far more
> flexible. The cost has been way way lower. The two machines we have had in
> the role (original one was a P166 with 64MB RAM, now an Athlon with 128MB)
> have both performed flawlessly. Neither has any special hardware and we
> only retired the first machine because it was getting to be five years old
> and MAY have become unrealiable - but it hadn't yet. It was still handling
> the load perfectly well.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Richard

You gotta love it!  More folks should be doing the same.

Years ago, we had a cisco 4500 fail, and replaced it with a P133, floppy 
disk, 4 NIC's, and 32MB RAM running the Linux Router Project.  The bonus 
was the 100Mb NIC's upgraded our network backbone to 100Mb, we had not 
yet come up with the cash to convert the cisco from 10Mb.

Many UNIX variants make great routers but very few can fit on a floppy 
disk and give the options that Linux does.

A question for Richard, how many NIC's are in your Linux router?  We 
currently have one with 5 looking to go to 6, but are considering 
consolidating that to a couple of load balanced Gb NIC's in 2 boxes.

- cameron
-- 
- cameron miller
- UNIX Systems Administrator
- Outhouse Attendant
- http://portal.adams.edu/outhouse/
- cdmiller@adams.edu