> Routers and switches tend to be store-and-forward; they receive the entire packet, an interrupt is generated by the NIC, a routing decisions is made, the pac

> Routers and switches tend to be store-and-forward; they receive the entire packet, an interrupt is generated by the NIC, a routing decisions is made, the packet is shoved into the buffer of the outgoing NIC, etc. That doesn't even cover firewalling. 3ms delay through multiple circa-2002 routers, firewalls, and switches is not believable. this acutally hasn been true for high level routers since the late 90's. On an Juniper M and MX series device for instance, a packet is broken up into a "parcel" (the first 256 bytes of an IP packet) and is saved in shared memory. Further packet processing is done by dividing up parcel lookups to the routing table across different linecard processors. (depending on the linecard, this can differ wildly). This setup has been in place since the late 90's, although not on "lower end" hardware. As far as i am aware, cisco has a similair mechanism in their higher end products for atleast a decade or two.