Re: Need Quad Ethernet for router box

[Kevin <kkadow_(_at_)_gmail_(_dot_)_com>]

On 7/21/05, Bill Chmura <Bill_(_at_)_explosivo_(_dot_)_com> wrote:
> We finally got some money to build a router for the center of a 200-300
> user network.  Upon arrival I found it to be one giant segment with old
> old switches (sort of - not real ones) and terrible sprawl.
> 
> I need to build a router that will handle 7 segments, 4 of which are
> very heavily used, 3 of which are pretty light.

Can you define "very heavily used" ?

Have you considered aggregating the lightly-used segments in a slightly
more modern switch (e.g. a 3524XL), configuring a trunk port from the
switch to uplink multiple VLANs to a single GigE physical interface on the
BSD router?

Alternately, if you really do need router throughput at or above 1000Mbps,
you might want to consider a purpose-built gigabit router from Cisco :)

Both suggestions are under the assumption that the "router" is not primarily
intended as a security separation between subnets.


> I was contemplating a
> Quad gigabit card and a 100MB Quad card (to keep the price down).  I've
> got a budget of $3000 US to build this thing.  I was thinking the Intel
> Pro 1000 Quad cards, but thats pretty pricy considering I have to
> aquire the hardware also.

We are very happy with the ""Intel PRO/1000MT" quad copper GigE cards,
but we are not coming close to pushing their limits, I'm still waiting for OC-3.


> Can someone recommend another good obsd friendly good performer / value
> for the price Quad Ethernet 1000 card?  If I can keep it down, I would
> use two and not do the 100MB on the slow segments.
> 
> Also is going PCI-X going to get me much?  I was reading some notes in
> the archives (obsd?) that showed the cards won't need it that much, and
> another post saying it was going to be slammed by a Quad card.

If you expect to push hundreds of megabits at peak through the multiport
card, then PCI-X will buy you some headroom.  One caveat, many PCI-X
motherboards can only run one card at the full 133Mhz speed.

Kevin Kadow