From: Majdi S. Abbas [mailto:msa@samurai.sfo.dead-dog.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 1:20 PM
Please let me know when your Linux box is capable of doing
line rate forwarding on an OC-192.
I actually saw a Linux box capable of doing this. It was on IBM S/390
hardware. Admitedly, that would be a waste of horsepower. OC-192 is far to
slow to keep that box busy.
<GRIN>
.. actually, if only the PCI bus were faster, I'm sure someone
could build a GigE linerate router running under FreeBSD or Linux.
OC192 would probably want something a little more dedicated than
a PCI bus. But then, thats what a Juniper is for, right? 
Adrian
> > From: Majdi S. Abbas [mailto:msa@samurai.sfo.dead-dog.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 1:20 PM
> > Please let me know when your Linux box is capable of doing
> > line rate forwarding on an OC-192.
> I actually saw a Linux box capable of doing this. It was on IBM S/390
> hardware. Admitedly, that would be a waste of horsepower. OC-192 is far to
> slow to keep that box busy.
we've got a client who is playing with linux/390. it's such a ... anti-climax.
it looks and smells just like linux on a pee cee.
.. actually, if only the PCI bus were faster, I'm sure someone
could build a GigE linerate router running under FreeBSD or Linux.OC192 would probably want something a little more dedicated than
a PCI bus. But then, thats what a Juniper is for, right?
i always thought the JUNOS was basically FreeBSD with the routing table
code re-written. the remarks about freenix being able/unable to
run at these speeds (hardware bus notwithstanding) seem out of place,
as i think the real sleight-of-packet happens on hardware blades;
the supervisory operating system doesn't play much of a part here.
i'm sure many of us agree that Windows XP will be industrial-strength
enough to do the job, too. ;->
OK.. so we look here:
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/networking/news.html
and see:
"Clustered z900 can deliver up to 96 GIGABYTES per second (786 gigabits
per second) of networking bandwidth to help you tackle your transaction
traffic explosion. This is equivalent to the bandwidth of 9,600 ten
megabyte per second ESCON networking device attachments."
However....
A FICON interface is 70MBytes/sec. A new z/Series 900 comes with 96 of them, and
you can cluster a bunch of 900s (though I dont know if Linux supports the clustering).
However, I poked on IBM's web site, and found this:
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/networking/linux.html
Fastest I see listed there is gigabit - and even *that* has a problem, in that
it's 125 MBytes/second if you sustain it - over-running a FICON.
Looks to me like 96 gigabytes/second is a cluster of 16 z-900's, each with
96 gigabits running at 50% capacity....
I don't see where IBM has a S/390 box that can drive 2 OC-192s at line speed.
Valdis Kletnieks
Operating Systems Analyst
Virginia Tech
