Re: GigE firewall & hw considerations

[John Cosimano <jmc@lpmd.org>]

Quoting <Henning Brauer <lists-openbsd@bsws.de>> on <Wed, Nov 14, 2001 at 11:47:20AM +0100>:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2001 at 03:45:52PM -0800, John Cosimano wrote:

> > Hardware is cheap enough that it really shouldn't matter. I drive a
> > SysKonnect-based card with an AMD K-6 233 and it holds up just fine. I have
> > it plugged into our Cisco core, and I SPAN traffic to it. I've never seen it
> > choke yet.
> 
> Just bumping traffic into is different from routing. After all, packages per
> second are the interesting value.
> Downside is you wont really now how much hardware you need before just
> trying it.

Good point. I never really thought of it like that. I used to SPAN with a
linux box and a gigE card (something from 3Com). tcpdump would drop lots of
frames. I attributed that to poor driver support, and not necessary PCI bus
speed or speed of the CPU.

--j

-- 
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