[ale] Opinion Call: Firewalls for DSL

[jeff]

BHa at ixl.com wrote:
> 
> I am surprised that FreeBSD's networking is 10% more efficient than Linux.
> 4-5 years ago, Linux's networking was completely rewritten and we had
> become par with the BSD.
> 
> It may be time for Alan Cox to revisit his networking codes.
> 
> I have to say that Linux owes a lot to the BSD crowd: FreeBSD, NetBSD, ...
> Without their continuing reminders how "bad" we are, we would not have
> advanced as fas as we have done now.
> 
> Bao
> 
> -----Original Message-----

> Hmm.  I'd think "efficient" would refer to cpu utilization or processing
> speed or something like that.  TCP/IP is still TCP/IP, and you're not
> going to get 10% more _bandwidth_ out of the same pipe unless you have a
> pretty slow machine pushing bits..

 I say this as an unabashed admirer of FreeBSD:

 Until about a year and a half ago, certain implementations in the Linux
TCP stack were less than optimal, notably the filtering portions.
Running tcpdump on linux used to require a kernel call *per* packet,
bringing the system to it's knees and/or dropping every other packet.
Certain hooks for related functions like logging and so forth had much
the same problem.

 Then Alan Cox came along and fixed most of it. As of 2.2.x,
(2.1.twentysomething, actually) the most horrid of the TCP stack
problems were fixed, and most of the rest are mostly unused functions
like the X.25 code.

 Using BSD does still make a difference if your network looks like ours
(an OC-3 is our smallest pipe), but unless you are running many megabits
of data through your box (in which case you can probably afford to buy a
router with dedicated ASICs), you shouldn't see any difference.

float cents = 0.2;

jeff
--
To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe ale" in message body.