I would agree with Guy 100% on this.  I do network security for a
"Major" US Health Plan and we use Cisco for all routing.  Nothing can
meet or beat it.

On 11/1/06, Guy Boisvert <boisvert dot guy at videotron dot ca> wrote:
> Chris Taylor wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'm wondering if someone can satisfy my curiosity here...
> >
> > 1. If you were an ISP and you wanted a router to aggregate several
> > hundred user's DSL connections together, would it be possible to use
> > m0n0wall/BSD - with appropriately fast hardware and good GBit NICs -
> > to act as a traffic shaper?
> >
> > 2. Does anyone actually do this? Not m0n0wall necessarily, but using
> > BSD for this kind of thing.
> >
> > 3. What other routing platforms would be up to the task? The main
> > feature I'm interested in here is the delay facility built into m0n0
> > (and I presume available in BSD in general). Do Cisco etc offer any
> > products that can add arbitrary delays like this?
> >
> > Thanks very much :)
> >
> > Chris Taylor
> >
>
> Hi Chris,
>
>     Cisco is definitely the way to go for this kind of duty (well,
> Juniper could do it too).  You'll find a lot of features not available
> / not yet stable on mOnO.  It's not to lessen all mOnO does, it's just
> that mOnO aim at being a firewall on PC style hardware (or SBC).  The
> goal is not the same.  Sure that Cisco will cost a lot more though!  Not
> to mention the support plan available from Cisco.  If you're into
> business critical services, Cisco is about the only way to go (i don't
> know about Juniper service but it should be similar).
>
>     I worked for a big utility company here in Quebec and we couldn't
> have lived without Cisco really.  On certain routers, we had a 2 hours
> service plan with full support directly from the developper of IOS.  I
> remember calling tech support for an ATM / LANE / Decnet problems we had
> back in 1998 (at the time LANE wasn't even a stable standard) and we had
> the developper taking the plane to see what was happening here by
> himself, recoding right away and giving us the freshly built IOS to fix
> the problem.  We were one of the few businesses using Decnet along with
> IP, IPX et ISO.  Sure that all this has a price.
>
>     Personally, i use mOnO for firewalling (well, i use other firewall
> too: Secure Computing, PIX, Watchguard), but for routing it's Cisco all
> the way.  For example, we used HSRP from Cisco for years but in Linux,
> CARP is just starting to be an alternative.  Not to mention the maturity
> of Cisco IOS for routing, QoS, MPLS, etc.  I have Cisco router here in
> my lab that still work great albeit they are in service since 1996.
>
>     It all depend on what you want to do exactly.  We're talking about
> several hundreds of DSL connection, it can be huge traffic and you have
> to check what kind of support you want and what service level you want
> to achieve.  Finally, check your budget and do a business case.  That's
> network engineering!  If you want to start doing that kind of
> investigation, you could read "CCDA" books from Sybex or Cisco.  It
> would give you a head start at doing this.
>
>     Finally, i'd like to say that we can do a lot with open source
> software but it's a matter of what you want to achieve, what is your
> level of knowledge and if you can do software development.  I love
> mOnOwall (hats off to the developper and the community) but i use it
> where it fits.
>
>     Hope this helped.  I know it's not a precise response but
> engineering is about getting all the informations before giving a
> precise response!
>
> Guy Boisvert, ing.
> IngTegration inc.
>
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