Gigabit Linux Routers

[nanog at daork.net (Nathan Ward)]

On 18/12/2008, at 3:02 AM, Chris wrote:

> Hi All,
> Sorry if this is a repeat topic. I've done a fair bit of trawling  
> but can't
> find anything concrete to base decisions on.
>
> I'm hoping someone can offer some advice on suitable hardware and  
> kernel
> tweaks for using Linux as a router running bgpd via Quagga. We do  
> this at
> the moment and our box manages under the 100Mbps level very  
> effectively.
> Over the next year however we expect to push about 250Mbps outbound  
> traffic
> with very little inbound (50Mbps simultaneously) and I'm seeing  
> differing
> suggestions of what to do in order to move up to the 1Gbps level.
>
> It seems even a dual core box with expensive NICs and some kernel  
> tweaks
> will accomplish this but we can't afford to get the hardware purchases
> wrong. We'd be looking to buy one live and one standby box within  
> the next
> month or so. They will only run Quagga primarily with 'tc' for  
> shaping.
> We're in the UK if it makes any difference.
>
> Any help massively appreciated, ideally from those doing the same in
> production environments.


Give Click a try - it is an alternative forwarding plane for Linux,  
that ran much faster than regular Linux forwarding a few years ago,  
and I imagine would still do so.

The XORP routing suite supports various different FIBs, including Click.

http://read.cs.ucla.edu/click/

--
Nathan Ward