Open Source Router on Par With Cisco, Users Say 202
Jane Walker writes "On a mission to avoid paying top dollar for Cisco routers, two users say Vyatta's Open Flexible Router is a viable alternative to the proprietary norm. Find out about the pluses and minor hassles involved in deploying this alternative." This probably won't surprise the users of (much lower end) networking gear like the famously hackable Linksys WRT54G, which — like a number of internally similar routers — can be reconfigured with one of several open-source firmwares to do things impossible with the hardware as delivered.
I LOVE DD-WRT (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:do NOT modify the hardware - or it may cost you (Score:3, Interesting)
Huh? What?
It's my hardware. If I buy a Cisco router via eBay, you're telling me I'm not allowed to put Linux on it if I can figure out how?
Re:if it is only "Standard PC Hardware" (Score:2, Interesting)
Cisco's routers are cheap, mostly Intel-based systems with PC-quality hardware and low performance for the dollar. If you are routing mostly Ethernet (which most do these days), you can build a multi-hundred-megabit Linux router very inexpensively and get more performance out of it than a 7x00 series Cisco router.
Support, Support, Support (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:if it is only "Standard PC Hardware" (Score:4, Interesting)
If I had one dollar for every time I give this answer, I'd be frelling rich:
99% of businesses use sub 10Mb connection to the Internet and yet they are told the Cisco is the only way to connect them professionally. Moreover, the sub-$10k Cisco gear is a crap when it comes to performace, on par with good PCIe PC running on multiple Gbit eth interfaces.
That about sums it up.
RobertRe:do NOT modify the hardware - or it may cost you (Score:3, Interesting)
This bit me a couple of years ago when I bought a 2611 on e-bay, and wanted to put the latest security fixes on it. Not being Cisco certified, I contacted Cisco to find out about getting or purchasing updates. I was told that my router was "gray market" and that I would need to buy another license for it.
"How much is that?", I asked.
"$1500.00."
"Holy shit!" (hangs up phone, lest they send the software gestapo.)
I had my lawyer review the license agreement that happened to be included in the box. He concurred. I was screwed if I wanted to use this router legimately.
I have the money to buy as much Cisco gear as I need, but this pissed me off so much that I haven't bought any since that day. Nor have any of my customers.
Cisco is not the only game in town, and they aren't the best any more. The people saying they are; either are not looking, or don't know anything else. Cisco just seems to be the only company with a product line extending from the very low to the very high-end.
Re:Why change from DSL? Reliability... (Score:3, Interesting)
True, there is no way to guarantee uptime completely, because it all involves wires or radio or something else that can fail in ways that you're not going to be able to fix quickly. Our T1s aren't bonded for reliability, but for speed... a fractional fiber just wasn't available to that site, so multiple T1s is the only way to increase speed. We're hosting, not surfing, so uplink speed is our bottleneck.
But bonded DSLs have the same problem that a single DSL has - no guarantee of service. Period. And you can have one for each of 40 different ISPs, but they're all routed through the same phone company to get to your premises, which can fail. Our E911 centers have redundant feeds, taking different routes from the telco switch to the center... And we had one taken out completely by a high voltage line that fell and melted the (buried) fiber trunk to the telco switch.
One of our sites had "business cable" for its internet connection for years. At that time, the 95% uptime wasn't too bad. Now panic sets in to management if someone can't reach the sites for 5 minutes in the middle of the night, so that site has fiber plus a backup T1.
Hardware support lacking (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Difference between hardware and software.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Cisco routers don't have any Intel processors in them. Some of their network modules that run LINUX do, but their not the router. Open one up and look. In fact they never have and never were x86-based. They were Sun boxes way back when created in Stanford's labs, but that was before Bush Sr. was president. Regular PC's may or may not be able to forward packets as well as a Cisco router, I'm sure you could tweak one to do that, but can they also do QoS, Security (NAC, FW, IPS, etc) application acceleration, WAN BW reduction, act as a branch office IP PBX, offer wireless service, replace branch File and Print servers - all in the same box and running at wire speed?
Given that the network has moved from a bunch of "tubes" that pass packets efficiently to one that is a L7 aware, intelligent fabric that brokers messages and resources between hosts, secures the data, and incorporates services into the fabric (such as message routing, translation and security) to enable the foundation for an SOA enterprise, who cares about plain vanilla packet forwarding anymore? If I wanted to do that, I'd buy Huawei for a fraction of the cost or get one for free from my Telco. But that's not the state of the networking world anymore, not what customers want and replicating 10 year old technology on open source is just useless for 80% of the market.
Cisco switch performance review (Score:3, Interesting)