Re: Linux based router for Gigabit traffic

[Neil Horman <nhorman@redhat.com>]

David S. Miller wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 08:49:04 -0400
> Neil Horman <nhorman@redhat.com> 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.
Really?  What are PCI bus transfer rates up to these days?  I havent 
looked into it in quite a while.
N3il

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