Re: using OpenBSD router for games networks ?

[Henning Brauer <lists-openbsd_(_at_)_bsws_(_dot_)_de>]

On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 05:28:35AM -0700, Daniel de Young wrote:
> > using mrtg to graph their traffic usage, they never really used more
> > than 600-800Kbps, but there were some performance issues with the cisco
> >
> > it looks like the majority of the traffic was composed of loads and
> > loads of very small udp packets (I guess containing gaming events for
> > each user action within the game), and the cisco was struggling to cope
> > with them all
> >
> > I was wondering if a OpenBSD box with a P4 of smoe speed and 1-2GB of
> > RAM would handle this any better ? the router had previously been
> > deployed elsewhere in the platform where it had handled upto 60Mbps of
> > traffic without complaint, but it was mainly http and ftp based, this
> > udp games traffic is just totally butt f***ing the thing
> 
> I'd be interested to know just what the symptoms were. Proc utilization? 
> Memory usage? Were your packets delayed or actually dropping?  How did the
> upstream routers handle it?  I guess I've never ran that kind of traffic,
> but I've run the 3640 quite a bit.
> 
> The members of the Zebra list may have a good idea about
> performance/throughput of different kinds of traffic with standard PC
> hardware.

I'm running OpenBSD as router; and I see preaks at far beyond 25000 
packets per second. with good NICs this is a relatively easy job.
if your cisco now is only equipped with ethernet interfaces I see 
absolutely no reason to not use OpenBSD instead.
btw, in my case the hardware is just a Duron 700 (or was it a 650? 
something in this range) and it runs at ~ 10% CPU at this load...
cisco notoriously gives its routers too little CPUs. Of course that is 
not to force people buy bigger and more expensive routers, who would 
think _that_.

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