OT: router?

[Joel Jaeggli]

On Thu, 26 Jan 2006, Neil Cherry wrote:

> azeem ahmad wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> From: Neil Cherry <ncherry at comcast.net>
>>> azeem ahmad wrote:
>
>> i dont need a gigabit, rather i want 100Mbps.
>
> The WRT has 10/100 Mbps interfaces, the Cisco routers up to
> the 2811 have 10/100 interfaces. If you need to have 6 or 7
> different interfaces you won't find that on a consumer grade
> router (the WRT).
>
>>> Technically there is no such thing though Cisco seems to be one
>>> of the closest to approach that. I think I know what you mean
>>> though (not a PC).
>
>> Mr Neil Cherry do u mean that there isnt any such hardware that enable 
>> ip_forwarding between those networks.
>
> My apology for bringing up this subject, sometimes I am too
> picky for my own good.
>
> Correct there is always software involved hence no such thing as
> a hardware router. It's a minor quibble, some Cisco routers have
> hardware (ASICs) that accelerates routing. I would expect this to
> be true in any of the larger router platforms from any vendor.
>
> One more thing, firmware is just software in a chip. I don't
> consider that strictly hardware.
>
> I guess my quibble is really for naught as there is also no
> such things as a strict software router since there must be
> hardware to support it. Maybe it's best to define this as
> a dedicated router (a Cisco router) vs a non-dedicated router
> ( a PC with router software).

two kinds of routers...

Devices in which the forwarding and control plane are converged. That's 
wrt54g, imagestream, cisco 2600, cisco 7200, my dekstop etc.

Devices in which the forwarding and control-planes are seperated. ie 
there's a control-plane processor, and then an asic or processor based 
forwarding engine in an interface/line-card. That's cisco 7500/gsr/hfr, 
juniper Mxxx, procket, etc. These tend to scale as the backplane grows or 
more interfaces are added while the control-plane remains substantially 
unchanged.

>

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Joel Jaeggli  	       Unix Consulting 	       joelja at darkwing.uoregon.edu
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