Re: CPU for firewall machine?

[Rogerio Brito <rbrito@iname.com>]

On Aug 10 2000, Ray Olszewski wrote:
> For internal routing ... my own tests confirm the conventional
> wisdom that a modest-speed 486 (a 486DX266 for sure, probably even a
> DX40) is plenty fast enough for the 5 mpbs throuput that is the
> effective limit of 10 mbps Ethernet.

	Yes, a 486 is usually fast enough for those packet mangling
	needs... The only drawback seems to be that ISA cards tend to
	generate higher loads on the machine than PCI cards (it's an
	unfortunate situation that the original poster's 486 doesn't
	have a PCI slot).

	But I'd like to question your figure that 5mbps is the
	effective limit of 10mbps Ethernet.

	Two or three hours ago, I had to transfer a CD image between
	two machines of mine and both of them are using el-cheapo
	10mbps ISA cards. I started the transfers using NFS but after
	I saw that it would take my entire life for the transfer to be
	finished, I simply installed Apache on the serving side and
	used wget to pull the file.  Whoa, I visibly got much better
	transfer rates and wget, at the final of the transfer said it
	got 400MB+ with a transfer rate of 915.xx KB/s, which is much
	more than 5mbps. This obviously doesn't count the overhead
	incurred by the TCP/IP protocols.

	So, this means the 486 might be subject to more than 5mbps.
	But I still believe it can handle it, depending on the needs
	of the network and pattern of usage.


	[]s, Roger...

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  Rogerio Brito - rbrito@iname.com - http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito/
     Nectar homepage: http://www.linux.ime.usp.br/~rbrito/nectar/
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