From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "David S. Miller" Subject: Re: Linux based router for Gigabit traffic Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 22:56:07 -0700 Sender: linux-net-owner@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: <20040822225607.401e9d5d.davem@redhat.com> References: <7a436d9b040822053245a3304d@mail.gmail.com> <41289640.4060902@redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <41289640.4060902@redhat.com> List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: Neil Horman Cc: ananth.kandukuri@gmail.com, linux-admin@vger.kernel.org, linux-net@vger.kernel.org On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 08:49:04 -0400 Neil Horman wrote: > Quite simply a general purpose CPU system isn't normally built to > handle network traffic at gigabit rates, especially not from multiple > ports at once. If you really want a line rate gigabit router, you need > custom ASIC to do hardware offload of that work. Several networking > companies make just such hardware (of course most only sell the chips, > not full pci cards with integrated NICS). Check out broadcom, AMCC or > Intel, they all have hardware like what you're looking for. Gigabit routing is possible with commodity hardware. It's a software problem for the cases that go fast enough currently.