Re: 10GE router resource

    I wonder how difficult it would be to integrate such a
device on to
an x86 board cheaply. Something like NetFPGA (http://netfpga.org/) would
be an interesting place to start. The board has on board
SRAM, a bit of
DRAM, an FPGA, and 2 GigE interfaces.
    I know it definitely isn't  normal for Network Operators
to fund
research like this, but it would still be fairly interesting
if there
was an Open Router  Consortium (something for Vyatta to
start?) with
hardware acceleration to X86 routers. Possibly even making
Quagga a
mainstream control plane. Right now Quagga is controlled by
a few
engineers from Sun. This nearly produces a conflict on
interest (Sun
used to have their own routing platform). Anyways, to end my
rambling...
As network operators would you finance a low, medium end
router with
decent ROI.  The question for developers (Vyatta primarily),
could you
do what Digium did for Asterisk--become business front, and
provide
platforms for Asterisk deployment in the enterprise--for
Quagga, Linux,
etc?


William Herrin wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 4:26 PM, Sargun Dhillon
<sdhillondecarta.com> wrote:
>   
>>  from a viewpoint of hardware,
>>  x86 is a fairly decent platform. I can stuff 40
(4x10GigE multiplex with
>>  a switch) 1 GigE ports in it. Though, the way that
Linux works, it
>>  cannot handle high packet rates.
>>     
>
> Correction: The way DRAM works, it cannot handle high
packet rates.
> Also note that the PCI-X bus tops out in the 7 to 8
gbps range and
> it's half-duplex.
>
> High-rate routers try to keep the packets in an SRAM
queue and instead
> of looking up destinations in a DRAM-based radix tree,
they use a
> special memory device called a TCAM.
>
> http://ww
w.pagiamtzis.com/cam/camintro.html
>
> Regards.
> Bill Herrin
>
>
>   


-- 
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Sargun Dhillon
deCarta
sdhillondecarta.com
www.decarta.com

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 6:54 PM, Sargun Dhillon
<sdhillondecarta.com> wrote:
>     I wonder how difficult it would be to integrate
such a device on to
>  an x86 board cheaply. Something like NetFPGA (http://netfpga.org/) would
>  be an interesting place to start. The board has on
board SRAM, a bit of
>  DRAM, an FPGA, and 2 GigE interfaces.

Hi Sargun,

SRAM != TCAM. With SRAM you can only access one word per
cycle. The
coolness of the TCAM is that the entire memory is queried in
one
cycle, spitting out the best match.

Nevertheless, there is some interesting hardware out there.
The Endace
DAG card with the coprocessor has a TCAM on it, but it's not
big
enough to handle a full BGP table.

Regards,
Bill Herrin



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