[Soekris] GigE alternative

[Rainer Ruecker]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2007 at 12:57:33PM -0600, Balázs Nagy wrote:
> For most applications we love the Soekris boxes.  However, we need to 
> firewall some streaming media servers that push several hundred Mbps. 
> We currently get Cat5 hand-offs from the the data-center, but we can 
> increase the stability of our streaming network by getting direct 
> backbone connections with multi mode fiber links.
> 
> Does anyone have gear to recommend that we could use instead of Cisco 
> 36xx series?  I would prefer running bgpd on OpenBSD if I can find 
> hardware that is fast enough to handle 400Mbps at the gateway and more 
> internally.
> 
> I guess the 5501 even with the 2 PCI slots doesn't have the throughput 
> to handle that much traffic, although I wish it did.  Perhaps a 5501 
> with PCI-X or PCI-E will see the light of day?

Hi,

if you have many small packets at this rate, the box will see a high
rate of interrupts. You should consider to run OpenBSD on something like
a 1HE Server from HP, IBM or whatever you prefer. As much as the 
small boards are nice, 500Mbps and more is out of their league.

Cheers,
Rainer Ruecker

> 
> All the best,
> Balázs