[Gllug] Content switches using Linux

[Richard Cottrill]

Hi guys,

I'm not a routing guru by any stretch, but when I found out what a Nokia 
CSS (Content Switching System) is, I thought "that sounds like an IP 
router with scripts for dynamic configuration...". The allegory is "Why 
pay hundreds of thousands of pounds for something that can be done with 
commodity hardware and free software? I might have a go at hacking one 
together myself". (at least I think it's an allegory, but let's not get 
into a long discussion about it please).

I found one of the Nokia guys and he came back with "6GB throughput; can 
  Linux do that?". I figured that to do inspection of packets to fill 6 
x 1GB ethernet cards; and run remote interrogation of servers and 
process the results, may be a bit taxing for a single processor and 
commodity hardware...

So, my questions are:

- Will the Linux kernel use multiple processors for this sort of work 
(many, very big routing tables)?

- Will a PCI bus come close to holding this sort of throughput?

- I can imagine a number of smaller machines would have a better chance 
(I'm thinking blade servers here); but could it really work? I can 
imagine a number of management headaches...

- Would another Free OS scale better for this v.high throughput (multi 
processor) router? *BSD, or (SHOCK!) HURD (given it's micro kernel, 
maybe it can put multiple routers/tables on multiple processors where 
the monolithic kernels can't)?

Richard


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