Lee Sharp wrote:
You layer 2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9 switch kids 
> today have it too easy...  Hrumgh." ;)

Ha ha !
You mean like: 
how to discern layer-2 from layer-3 devices ?
Layer-2 devices have no fans...

Ok, joke by side.
Technically seen a router spend most of his time doing ... 
Right, forwarding ! (you thought routing hu ?).
Therefore is more than logical to use forwarding engines aka switches to do the job and just inject
a small intelligence to translate topologies to forwarding tables.
Think at a Layer-3 switch as a high performance ethernet router.

For the open source routers Xorp is the one I like mostly.
Pretty stable, fast, clean config, lots of features and no GUI !


Daniele



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