CIDR FAQ

> Look, I really hate to sound like I have sour grapes,  but this thread
> keeps coming up and I all hear about the PC router issue is a lot of 
> talk about price and CPUs,  but I don't actually hear any operational
> experience about them.

OK. Here we are. We use them in a mission critical environment. For
Ethernet to Ethernet routeing with a full routeing table they are
wonderful. Trying to make them work as fast serial routers is another
matter. But they *do* work.

> PCs have been around for years, and even 4.4+reno/gated boxes have been
> around as long as cisco/bgp4 boxes.  If they really are such a great value,
> why the hell aren't "those evil router vendors" out of business in the
> Internet market yet?

There are a large number of reasons, from the technical to the
commercial to the marketing-people-on-steroids reasons.

Reason 1. Special boxes are better. In some cases. Especial for the
non technically competant organisations that don't want to or need to
roll there own. There are of course also Cisco/Bay Networks hackers
too.

Reason 2. "Know one ever got fired for buying Cisco." Remember where that
saying has been adapted from.

Reason 3. Marketing. "We use Cisco/Bay/router-of-the-day in our core network.
We must be profressionals". Hmm.

> Call me thin skinned,  but this is really starting to get old.
> I would like to personally see the folks who keep extoling the virtues of
> roll-your-own solutions either put up or shut up.

We have. Thanks. We are very happy using Pentiums running NetBSD as
*core* routers. Three PCI 10/100Mb Ethernet cards. Great stuff.
35,000 dialup SLIP/PPP customers can't be that wrong.

> Can we kindly return this thread to: "What boxes don't do classless routing?"

We did - the CIDR FAQ started out as an ad for Cisco, some of us are
trying to get some balance in this area.

Regards,
-- 
Peter Galbavy                                                 peter at demon.net
@ Demon Internet                                      phone://44/181/371_3700
                                            http://www.wonderland.org/~peter/
                  snail://UK/N3_1TT/London/42_Hendon_Lane/Demon_Internet_Ltd/