[Soekris] Which distro gives best performance?

[Brett Glass]

At 01:10 PM 12/17/2006, Jere Virta wrote:

>Hello,
>
>Isn't this article bit outdated, it's four years old and OS versions used
>are far from the latest.

True, but the basic design philosophies have not changed. I often 
use FreeBSD's userland PPP for PPPoE and PPTP, and I can vouch for 
the fact that it is still among the slowest due to multiple 
transitions from kernel to userland. It really sucks the wind out 
of the CPU, especially if you're doing NAT using FreeBSD's natd. I 
use it for its unparalleled flexibility, not for its speed. 
Netgraph/mpd on FreeBSD is more efficient but less flexible. 
FreeBSD recently gained the ability to do in-kernel NAT with the 
inclusion of pf and some new Netgraph hooks (though the latter do 
not let you do static NAT). NetBSD's implementation of PPPoE is 
primitive, but it is fast. Linux is faster than the BSDs but less 
stable. I've been throwing extra CPU at the problem and going with 
the most flexible and stable solution, but in embedded work this is 
not always an option.

--Brett Glass