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Routers used by most networks are proprietary boxes from specific vendors. There is no such thing as open source software for them. I do not know of an open so
by snowy 11y ago
Routers used by most networks are proprietary boxes from specific vendors. There is no such thing as open source software for them.
I do not know of an open source router hardware that is available (at ISP scale)
Getting an X86 box and throwing freebsd and quagga on it might work for small amounts of traffic. But for ISP scale bandwidth your stuck with a few main vendors...
- rsync 11y ago"I do not know of an open source router hardware that is available (at ISP scale)" You're basically correct but it's worth remembering that it is possible to add a bunch of quad nics to whitebox and run bpf on it, courtesy of one of the BSDs and do real routing at an ISP scale. That would be completely open source (and quite secure). Probably pretty performant if you knew what you were doing.
- snowy 11y agoyep, but you are never going to get a generic processor architecture to have anywhere near the performance of custom silicon ASICs designed for specifically for routing packets. No matter what software you put on top of it. Its never going to work in a core network routing 100s of gigs of traffic. So it's not going to work for ISPs
- Zigurd 11y agoThis story is about Cisco IOS ROMMON. AFAIK that limits the issue to enterprise-class routers. Such routers can be replaced with PC-based routers running open software.