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BusinessWeek On XORP vs. Cisco 302

Posted by timothy from the commoditization dept.
cornfed writes "BusinessWeek is running this article talking about how XORP will take on Cisco's dominance in the router market. The article speculates that XORP could represent the next 'open-source rebellion.' One can only imagine the fallout within the telecommunications industry if an open-source project like this gained traction-- Cisco would not be the only giant to be slain."
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BusinessWeek On XORP vs. Cisco More

BusinessWeek On XORP vs. Cisco

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  • Cisco's in trouble (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:00PM (#10964773)
    Because XORP is more fun to say.

  • Linux & Decentralization redux (Score:5, Insightful)

    by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) * on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:00PM (#10964776)
    The result of XORP & similar technology will be a decentralization of networks. If you look at a typical enterprise network, the backbone of that network will be a single "enterprise" (ie. expensive) Layer-3 switch from a company like Extreme, Foundry, Cisco or whatever.

    Those switches are cost-effective because of the needlessly high cost of low-end equipment.

    If supported, flexible & cheap routing becomes a reality, you'll see clouds of cheap-commodity level hardware replace big networking iron... just as Linux displaced Solaris, HP-UX and AIX.

    • Re:Linux & Decentralization redux (Score:5, Informative)

      by thpr ( 786837 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @04:03PM (#10966258)
      Those switches are cost-effective because of the needlessly high cost of low-end equipment.

      Like $1000 for a Cisco branch office router vs. $1000 for a PC with enough memory and processing power and networking cards to run XORP and match the router functionality?

      Or perhaps under $30 per port for a fixed Ethernet layer 3 switch at 100Mb?

      If you think these machines are "needlessly high cost" then I'm not sure you quite understand network requirements. I'm not saying there aren't places where XORP will be successful, but there are places it can't get to in the forseeable future (at least 3 technology generations). The core of any enterprise network is MUCH more complicated than a single switch and employs much more reliability than can be provided by a PC. Companies still buy IBM mainframes for a reason, and that high end in the routing space will be routers from Cisco, Juniper and similar devices for the forseeable future.

      The SMB market? Bring on XORP, they'll be playing with it by the end of the decade.

      • Re:Linux & Decentralization redux (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @04:55PM (#10967014) Homepage
        I dont think so.

        we recently did something like there here. all remote offices had sonicwall firewalls. After discovering that the sonicwall hardware calls home constantly, the emailling of logs is worthless as it demands to send the email as if it was "from" the to address thus never making through most spam filters, and that the tech support sucks, hardware is crap, and the equipment is horribly overpriced for what it is we switched to all smoothwall firewalls running on low end mini-itx hardware in cheap cases.

        each smoothwall firewall cost us $340.00 with ehcnosure and 2 gig hard drives installed for logging and data collection. we went from regular downtime whenever the link may have went down and required someone to reboot the sonicwall box to equipment that has worked perfectly for 1 year now.

        the sonicwall equipment needed attention almost every day and we had to spend an extra $900.00 per box for added VPN access "drivers" and extra $500.00 for 25 more client connect licenses or it would start dropping DHCP leases and blocking static IP addresses inside the lan.

        smoothwall guys talked us in to the commercial version for the support, but the free version would have done the job perfectly.

        we saved lots of money, have a firewall /NAT router that is the best on the market hands down and allows me to collect more data on the networks QOS data and other items that no other commercial device can.

        I can easily see XORP working on sub $400.00 hardware and working easily at gigabit speeds.

        now show me a way to connect csu's into a regular pc that is not insanely priced... that is what CISCO has going for it. their routers have slots for the CSU's ready to go. XORP does not.

  • Go after the big guy first! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:01PM (#10964785)
    Go after the big guy first and the others will be afraid to fight. That worked so well in gradeschool
    • I *am* the brute squad.
    • > Go after the big guy first and the others will be afraid to fight. That worked so well in gradeschool.

      Yeah, right.
      Considering the source (Anonymous Coward, for Christ's sake!), this not only is not insightful, it is also quite incredulous.

      Now about these XO guys: "The average data rate these business sites support is less than 200 kilobytes per second, and they control that with gear that commonly costs thousands of dollars."

      That illustrates the idea that businesses do NOT care about KBps (otherwise

  • More about XORP (Score:5, Informative)

    by the_mighty_$ ( 726261 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:02PM (#10964797)
    Here [com.com] is more about XORP (the Extensible Open Router Platform), for those that don't know.

  • Cisco: Good Riddance (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:04PM (#10964814)
    I, for one, am hoping that XORP wipes the floor with Cisco.

    Cisco is the only company with an employment policy that is worse than the one at Intel. Cisco does quarterly performance reviews; they are strictly by the bell (i.e. gaussian) curve. The bottom 10% are automatically fired without a second chance.

    Worse, Cisco has also demanded that it be allowed to hire foreign engineers from India and China. According to Cisco management, it absolutely needs H-1B engineers in order to be competitive and has continued to hire H-1B engineers, never minding that 80,000 Americans were unemployed in Silicon Valley during the 2001-2003 recession.

    • I support your sentiment. Further, their alleged demands (evidence please?) would seem to illustrate a blatant abuse of the H1-B program. The purpose is supposed to be so that local companies can gain access to skills from other sources when they aren't available here, not so a company can get them cheaper -- that's actually illegal isn't it? If they are officially citing that as the reason for the need, then I think some sort of legal action should be taken against them.

      In fact, I don't know why a grou
    • Worse, Cisco has also demanded that it be allowed to hire foreign engineers from India and China. According to Cisco management, it absolutely needs H-1B engineers in order to be competitive and has continued to hire H-1B engineers, never minding that 80,000 Americans were unemployed in Silicon Valley during the 2001-2003 recession.

      Yes this is horrible because all 80,000 of these Americans deeply wanted to work for Cisco and oddly enough all 80,000 of them were perfectly qualified to do so... Also what the

      • Re:Cisco: Good Riddance (Score:2, Insightful)

        by OhPlz ( 168413 )
        Of those 80,000 Americans I'd bet a good number of them cared less where they'd work after endless months of unemployment and cared more about having a job in the field, period. As for Cisco certs.. which makes more sense: bringing an Engineer in from overseas or training one that's already living here?

        I think both of you raise some valid points but I think the truth of the matter is somewhere in the middle.

        • Of those 80,000 Americans I'd bet a good number of them cared less where they'd work after endless months of unemployment and cared more about having a job in the field, period.

          What part of "perfectly qualified" don't you get? It's likely that only a small percentage of those unemployed IT folks actually have the background that Cisco is looking for.

          As for Cisco certs.. which makes more sense: bringing an Engineer in from overseas or training one that's already living here?

          Okay, let's put this in pe
        • Of those 80,000 Americans I'd bet a good number of them cared less where they'd work after endless months of unemployment

          Great so Cisco is supposed to jump at hiring someone who after months of failure says well I guess Cisco is alright, ill try there, over a very enthusiastic H-1B that pushed really really hard to get an interview and a chance at Cisco because it was their first choice? Im assuming you think this is the case because well hiring an American even though he had little real interest in work

          • H1B is close to servant status, IMO.

            If cisco needs them so bad, they need to go open a branch in India.

      • Re:Cisco: Good Riddance (Score:4, Insightful)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:38PM (#10965201) Homepage Journal
        I hate to say it, but you are greatly exaggerating the intellectual diversity of most jobs. Most jobs in software and hardware have the same basic skills. Working in a field that matches your specialization is nice, but it's far more important, at least in my experience, to hire an employee that can learn new skills easily, as that employee is not likely to do that exact job for the next thirty years. Therefore, whether those engineers possess those specific areas of specialization is far less important than whether they are capable of learning.

        Now admittedly, if they didn't get -any- competent applicants, it might be acceptable to hire an H1B here or there, but those are, by far, the exception rather than the rule, and should be limited to senior engineering positions and only in very small companies. Larger companies, upon failing to find someone qualified for a senior position, should be able to promote someone from within to a senior position and hire someone into a junior position---someone who doesn't require an H1B. There are plenty of new college graduates in the valley looking for work.

        Sorry, but there are far too many tech employees unemployed in the valley for your argument to hold weight. Companies in the valley should be utterly fined into oblivion if they are hiring H1B engineers right now in any significant quantity. As to whether Cisco is or not, I have no idea.

    • This reminds me of winroute. Damn good IP routing software on the PC. Quite frankly I have never seen a switch IOS smarter than a full operating system. So it doesn't surprise me if XORP becomes a super success in the future.

    • If you think that every division fires the bottom 10% every quarter you are insane. Yes divisions that are losing money generally fire slacker employees, and they justify it with the "it's company policy" line, but that doesn't mean that Cisco has a 40% annual turnover rate! Hell when the big round of layoffs happened they gave everyone 6 months severance and paid medical for 6 months! Cisco hires the best and the brightest from around the world, as well the should since they are a global company. I worked
      • I worked at Cisco too. I was a contractor, I was paid and treated VERY well. Cisco DOES cut the bottom 10% (saw it happen) but not in every group, and the DO bring H1B's over in droves. They pay the H1Bs well (better than most) and most of them are talented, but the still are paying below standard wages. Cisco will make a penny scream for mercy if it affects production costs. They got guys/gals working there that put in 90 hour weeks in the hopes their stock options will ever get above water. I don't know h
  • I would think there might or might not be paralells in that to the linux thing. Once upon a time there were big expesive unix computers, today replaced by commonity hardware in most cases, but still hanging on in others. So maybe in future: Once upon the time there was Cisco, today replaced by commonity hardware in most cases, but still hanging on...
    • Big tasks that require lots of cpu, i/o performance, and reliability, for the most part, still run on big iron. Fat-pipe networking will stay proprietary for some time to come, I'd bet.

      Can some XORP chingadera replace a soho or med-size office switch/router? Sure, but I'd offer that those products are already at commodity-level pricing, so what's the point in switching, other than as a hobbyist.

  • Microsoft funding this? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by d_jedi ( 773213 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:07PM (#10964848)
    XORP's first version was released in July, and heavier-duty versions are due in coming years. While it's hardly the first effort to make routing software in an open-source format, it may be the most promising, due to $3 million in funding from high-powered backers such as Intel, Microsoft (MSFT ), and the National Science Foundation.

    Sounds a little odd to me..


  • I'm not using MikroTik these days but I have deployed it in the past at Wireless ISPs. I hold the Cisco Certified Network and Design Professional ratings, the Wireless LAN SE and FE certificates, and I'll collect the Cisco Certified Internetwork Professional by the end of the year - I know a bit about IOS and I think MikroTik provides a much better interface than IOS for many things and it definitely gets all over Cisco in the wireless arena.

    Take a look at http://www.soekris.com after you get done l
    • We all know about Soekris, and your alphabet soup paper credentials don't mean squat.
    • I am a former Mikrotik user. Mikrotik is good in some ways and just plain awful in others. Despite being based on Linux, you cannot get to a command prompt to update packages manually. Why is this important? They run packages that are older than dirt that have known security holes and do not release updated packages with patches applied.

      They may have gotten better in this regard, but the last time I used them (a year ago) they had packages that suffered security holes a YEAR old. There is no excuse fo
    • Um...MikroTik also violates the GPL.

      I repeatedly requested the kernel sources so I could rebuild for an old cobalt box I had laying around, and they repeatedly refused, saying that they wouldn't support running microtik on anything but their hardware, despite the fact that the kernel sources are protected under GPL.

      I reported them, but apparently the only one who can enforce the GPL on the linux kernel is Linus himself, and he isn't interested in enforcing it. :(
      • Assuming MikroTik violates the GPL, what you are saing isn't true. Depending on the circumstances, they don't have to give you the source, they have to give the source up to people who they gave the binaries to. If they ship the binaries and the source to people at the same time, they don't have to give you the source (This is covered in Section 3 of the GPL).

        Now, assuming that they are in fact violating the GPL, anyone who has copyrighted material in the work can in fact force their hand. So any kerne

  • Open source with Microsoft funding?? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:09PM (#10964870) Homepage
    While it's hardly the first effort to make routing software in an open-source format, it may be the most promising, due to $3 million in funding from high-powered backers such as Intel, Microsoft (MSFT ), and the National Science Foundation.

    Okay... anyone else here wondering why and how that came about? Why would MS be involved in such a project? Is the licensing such that MS could siphon the code off for its own use? I'd suspect as much... not that it's a bad thing -- on the contrary, it's quite good -- just not the sort of thing I'd expect from them.

    • Re:Open source with Microsoft funding?? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mystik ( 38627 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:17PM (#10964968) Homepage Journal
      see xorp's website [xorp.org]

      It's BSD Licensed, so Yes, MS could take and use it, much like their TCP/IP stack.
    • believe it or not, windows server has been shipping with built in router software since NT4 days. win 2000 added bgp and other high end protocols. not sure about win 2003. i set up a win2000 router once in a lab for some testing.

      I bet MS is paying Cisco royalties on every copy of windows server, just like they pay royalties to a bunch of companies from who they license software for windows. the disk management software in win 2000 and later is from Veritas.

      if this OS router becomes popular, then you can s

    • #
      # $XORP: xorp/LICENSE,v 1.4 2004/06/10 22:40:27 hodson Exp $
      #

      Portions of this software have one or more of the following copyrights, and are subject to the license below. The relevant source files are clearly marked; they refer to this file using the phrase ``the XORP LICENSE file''.

      Copyright (c) 2001-2004 International Computer Science Institute

      Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in t

  • I'm sure Cisco is just terrified. . . (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JSBiff ( 87824 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:11PM (#10964892) Journal
    That a bunch of general purpose commodity hardware is going to replace their highly engineered, specialized hardware. Because, you know, I'm sure that businesses of all sizes are *very* anxious to rely on general purpose PC's for their high-performance routing needs.

    Don't get me wrong, I think XORP could be usefull in certain applications. I'm currently running Linux on an old Pentium for sharing internet access on my home network, so I understand that for small networks with relatively slow internet connections, general purpose hardware, running routing software, can be usefull.

    But I doubt it's going to 'slay the giant'. So much hyperbole in tech journalism these days (oh well, how else are you going to get people to read the article?)

    • a bunch of general purpose commodity hardware is going to replace their highly engineered, specialized hardware.

      Who said it had to run on commodity hardware? In fact the article specifically mentions trying to get semiconductor manufacturers interested in the project. Linux and the BSDs both run on their share of specialty hardware these days. This just aims to commoditize the software end and provide more flexibility.

    • I'm sure Cisco is just terrified That a bunch of general purpose commodity hardware is going to replace their highly engineered, specialized hardware.

      If they're smart, they are. Microsoft or Sun could use some really top-notch router software, some hardware and their sales force to really hurt Cisco. Xorp has a BSD-style license [xorp.org], so Sun and MS will have no problem taking it proprietary when it's good enough.

      Routers from Joe's garage are never going to be a threat, but routers from Microsoft or Sun wo

    • they should be (Score:5, Insightful)

      by geg81 ( 816215 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:34PM (#10965156)
      That a bunch of general purpose commodity hardware is going to replace their highly engineered, specialized hardware.

      Yes, and SGI probably never thought that PC hardware would drive them out of business either.

      Also, only a small core needs to be high performance; hardware vendors can take this kind of open platform, add a small piece of specialized hardware and custom software, and save themselves a boatload of development effort, and their customers a lot of training costs.
      • hmm, SGI isn't out of business, in fact I believe they just achieved their highest spot ever on the Supercomputer Top500 list this last quarter. There will always be a need for specialized high end hardware because adding the features that such niche applications need to the cheap mass consumption hardware would raise the cost of that cheap stuff unnecessarily.

        • Re:they should be (Score:4, Insightful)

          by geg81 ( 816215 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:56PM (#10965410)
          SGI isn't out of business,

          They are out of their core business, which was to develop high-end graphics workstations with specialized graphics hardware and software (IRIX, GL), now made pretty much redundant by PC-based systems.

          These days, they are shipping Linux clusters. That's a nice business, but it's a different business.
    • I'm sure that businesses of all sizes are *very* anxious to rely on general purpose PC's for their high-performance routing needs.

      And Cisco bought LinkSys precisely why?

  • customer support (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheLibero ( 750207 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:11PM (#10964895)
    one of the biggest reasons that cisco earn so much in comparison with other vendors is that they have decent support line. As for Open Source projects, usually, they are known by "fix-it-yourself".

    Production networks can't tolerate down time, or waiting for few admins to hack some code and fix some buggy router. So that XORP might be open source, but it has to be commercialized as well.

    • Re:customer support (Score:3, Informative)

      by geg81 ( 816215 )
      So that XORP might be open source, but it has to be commercialized as well.

      Of course. That's how open source works: people share the source code, but support, integration, add-ons, and improvements are pay-for-service kinds of deals. In fact, for a lot of open source software, it's the companies offering commercial support that are also paying developers for continued improvements to the open source project.

      As for Open Source projects, usually, they are known by "fix-it-yourself".

      I'm sure Microsoft'
    • I have always found Cisco customer support to be excellent - they either know the answer of will actually call you back with the answer, usually in the same day.

      Cygnus did well providing support for open source software. Perhaps XORPgnus could fill a similar niche?

    • My Cisco support has been nothing but awful. I tried to get some security updates for some older routers. They were purchased long before I started working at this company. There were no records available about the reseller. Long story short, it took Cisco 10 days to give us the security updates.

  • FC-U (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:15PM (#10964942) Homepage Journal
    It's not surprising that a Berkeley CS researcher thinks his open source project can "slay Cisco", though Ghosh never says anything like that in the article. It might not even be surprising when a Business Week reporter says something so naive, but it is disappointing. Even Linux isn't slaying anyone - it's apple and oranges (or maybe apples and ciscos): XORP might be comparable to Cisco's IOS router operating system, but XORP is hardly comparable to Cisco itself. If XORP works out, and becomes an effective competitor with IOS at any level, Cisco and its actual competitors will just start selling it, bundled with the support, marketing and corporate accountability that people buy when they buy "Cisco". Now if only the BizWeek reporter, Alex Salkever, had realized the compelling story here is Microsoft's funding a million-dollar routing project, and releasing the source as its central development strategy. That would make the Slashdot front page, too, without making Salkever famous for spreading Fearless Certainty, Undoubtedly (FC-U, (TM)).

  • What a lousy article (Score:4, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:15PM (#10964943) Homepage Journal

    The networking giant, which continued to gain market share in the third quarter of 2004, is certainly aware of the open-source threat. In fact, it's already selling a line of cheap networking gear for the consumer market based on another type of open-source software, Linux.

    You mean the stuff they got when they bought Linksys? That hardware is completely irrelevant to this discussion, because XORP is intended to replace the high-end cisco equipment, and the stuff they bought from linksys didn't even compete with their own products, with one or two limited exceptions like cisco's DOCSIS cable modem. I don't even know if the linksys cable modem runs linux.

    It does seem highly likely that we will see commoditization of the router market. It makes more sense to provide a chassis that takes full-length PCI cards than to require special cards which use a PCI interface anyway. PCI-E is the logical choice since it provides (potentially) more bandwidth than even PCI-X and you could use a wonky form factor if you wanted to, for example blade-type cards that have their connector on the back instead of the bottom. Even using an ordinary rackmount PC form factor, with just 66MHz/64 bit PCI, you could equal or surpass the performance of a cisco router with COTS hardware, provided you had the right software to run it all. Using 64 bit processors over the 32 bit ones found in most networking gear means being able to process IPv6 addresses significantly faster, and most of those systems do not have much processing power because they are proprietary and it's expensive to implement. PC processors are cheap and reference designs are readily available. However, we will need new chipset designs to provide sufficient bus bandwidth.

    • High end routers are really switches. They have a processor and software for building routing tables and management but the packets never see the processor they only go through a application specfic intergrated circuit(ASIC).

      Where XORP and linux based routers come in is in places where you need to use NAT or Filtering, not at the network core where you have high end routers.

      Unless some company starts spiting out a cheap L2 to L4 Switching ASIC, highend core routers are going to be expensive and cisco is g
      • One thing I see missing is that there is no hot standby software for linux, that montiors the other router and takes over automaticly when the other fails.

        Umm [sourceforge.net], what [ucarp.org]?

      • If the platforms are open then cisco, juniper, extreme et al will still exist, they will just be making standard hardware which will interoperate with everyone else's stuff. That can only be a good thing... for us. Not so good for Cisco.

        The cards for SONET, ATM et cetera will simply be made in a standard form factor. This will be good for consumers because they will be able to shop around.

        Similarly, individual cards with lots of switch ports will become available, because yes, cards will need to do swit

  • Switch?...Unlikely (Score:3, Insightful)

    by response3 ( 751852 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:17PM (#10964967)
    FTA: "I don't see open-source routing replacing high-end routers in enterprise or service provider networks," said Dave Passmore, an analyst at Burton Group. "But in the real low end, like in the D-Link and Linksys category of product, free software could be very useful."

    Useful, yes. But to how many? I'm not sure that Joe Sixpack could configure a router through a command line. In order to compete with Linksys, Netgear, and D-Link, they will also have to include a real stateful firewall and DynDNS support (which is something that is being included in most retail firewalls now).

    Also, if you have to setup a dedicated PC to run this, your average small business or home user isn't going to be interested when they can go to the local superstore and pickup a $59 Linksys that's ready to go, quiet, and small. Unfortunately, this software will not make it to the point where it would be a threat to any appliance-based router builder.
    • The products that are targeted by XORP and linux are cisco's 2600, 3600 and even the 7200 serise routers.

      Home and small offices are more plug in and go with little configuration. Current generation $79 routers own this market and they are likely to hold it.

      The job I see for PC based routers in in enterprise NAT and firewalling. Where you have a few hundred users doing typical task. Not for a network of power users, server farms, backbone or core routing.

      Support is going to be the issue, the same problem
    • Uh... Open Source and Linux doesn't necessarily mean using the command line to configure it. Check out the firmware patches for Linksys WRT54G. The stock product is based on Linux. There's a lot of third party hacks to it that extend its functionality by quite a bit, and 99% of it is configurable through the web interface.

  • In other words... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Gaewyn L Knight ( 16566 ) <vaewyn AT wwwrogue DOT com> on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:18PM (#10964975) Homepage Journal
    One can only imagine the fallout within the telecommunications industry if an open-source project like this gained traction

    in other words a project like say... Asterisk [asterisk.org]?

    We already have 5+ HUGE (100k+ DIDs) companies running it and raving about it... what more do you need? :}

  • * MSFT funds a LOT of companies and projects...not all of them get mentioned on Slashdot.
    * If the project takes off, why wouldn't IBM/MSFT start making cheap hardware to run the open source software on?
    • Don't forget that since XORP is under a BSD-style license, Microsoft can embrace-and-extend and sell a version incompatible with everyone else's. :)

  • Not at the mid to high end (Score:3, Informative)

    by tji ( 74570 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:24PM (#10965033)
    Xorp may be fine for low-end applications, where the cost of hardware is more important than the cost of support and uptime.

    But, for any relatively complex network, the tech support offerings of a big player like Cisco becomes very important. And, if they have high performance requirements, the custom hardware in a Cisco or Juniper box is pretty tough to compete with on a general purpose platform.

    Even at the low end, it's tough to compete with a Linksys/Cisco box doing basic routing functions. In terms of size, power usage, and noise, a small embedded router box is a much better option than a clunky x86 box running xorp.

  • What about the Hardware (Score:2, Informative)

    by sbraab ( 100929 )
    The problem is routers, especially high-end routers, are all about the hardware. The ability to build software based routers has been around as long as I can remember. (routed, gated, zebra, etc)

    Last time I looked, none of the open hardware project had done well. When you think about it, any company that is going to build a high quality 96 port ethernet adapter for a PC with hardware to accelerate security, qos and forwarding is going to end up charging a lot of money for it. Then layer in software custom

  • and.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by blackomegax ( 807080 )
    the moral of the story is... OPEN SOURCE OR DIE, CAPTIALIST PIG-DOGS!!!! if you get my drift... ;)
  • Working in a Cisco based shop, I can certainly appreciate the need for such a product. I look forward to it.

    The only problem I have with the article however is its definition of a switch.

    The article states: "Switches determine the most efficient path for everything from streaming videos to e-mails to instant messages." It is not correct, switches are not designed to make such determinations.

    The Webopedia says:
    (swich) (n.) (1) In networks, a device that filters and forwards packets between LAN segments.
    • He's refering to a Layer 7 switch, which are pretty common in the managed switch arena. Just because the classic definition of a switch is out of date doesn't mean that the author was incorrect.
    • Routing is just L3 switching. But routers typically do more than just route traffic. They do NAT, filtering, traffic shaping, build routing tables, etc...

      The lines between a switch and a router have been come blurred and they are quickly becomming the same device as the demand for low latency and high throughput increase.

      Traditionally the diffrence between a switch and a router is that a switch is done in hardware and a router is software. The other diffrence is that a switch only uses the L2 headers to
  • Besides getting mention in a mainstream publication, is there much new about the ability to route using open source software?

    As for commodity hardware - besides Ethernet, you're not going to find much that's really commodity about line cards like are used in high-end routers. PCI/PCI-X OC-3/OC-12/OC-48 "NICs" aren't exactly commodity.
  • it's hardly the first effort to make routing software in an open-source format, it may be the most promising, due to $3 million in funding from high-powered backers such as Intel, Microsoft (MSFT ), and the National Science Foundation.

    The biggest news here is perhaps not that there is an effort to create open source routing software, but that such an effort is backed by Microsoft.
  • XORP has a great idea, but they are several years late to the party. Apparently, NSF, Intel and its other backers have failed to learn from the dot-bomb era: you can't build a successful business on the backs of a product you're giving away at no charge. Do they plan to make it up on volume? :-)

    Linux enthusiasts ought to look toward more commercial companies, such as ImageStream ( http://www.imagestream.com/ [imagestream.com]) who has been in business 10 years, and building Linux routers for 7. Their corporate profile s

  • Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gtrubetskoy ( 734033 ) * on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:30PM (#10965123)

    So which "PC components" do I use to implement a modular all hot-swappable (including the supervisory modules) device that would provide me with 16 GE interface per blade, a crypto accelerator, an optional firewall module and whatever else cisco has up their sleeve for the 6500 series? IOS isn't what you pay for when you buy a router, Cisco is a hardware company.

  • Software vs ASICS ? No contest (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jgercken ( 314042 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:34PM (#10965155)
    There is NO way software routing can compare to processing packets in hardware. The Linux kernel wasn't designed for this and has problems when faced with a large number of packets. I'll reference the work done by Luca Deri at NTOP.org and his pfring mod. Unless we start seeing specialized open source hardware I don't think Cisco will feel threatened in the least.
    • People are already working on using XORP as the control plane for high-speed network processors. This would lower the barrier to entry in the high-end router market, since both the network processors and XORP are off-the-shelf.
    • I would like to point out that most Cisco Kit is actually running IOS off an embedded PPC CPU.

      There was even a project to run Linux on most Cisco routers and switches at one time.

      Currently you will see a large majority of Cisco's high end equipment moving to commodity hardware running linux.

      Examples of this are the Cisco Content Engine line are embeded linux machines. They are effectively a linux box running a proxy server (isn't squid, but has much of the same functionality).

      http://www.mcvax.org/~koen/

  • But Cisco isn't JUST about software (Score:4, Insightful)

    by feepcreature ( 623518 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:37PM (#10965190) Homepage
    XORP isn't the same as Cisco... XORP is software (or will be), Cisco provides quite a few extras that matter in the enterprise market
    • hardware
    • that is reliable
    • hot-pluggable
    • redundant (spare powersupplies, etc)
    • and routing software (that's where XORP fits), and
    • warranty
    • support
    • documentation and support materials
    • training
    • certification / qualifications
    • network design / professional services consultancy
    • brand recognition
    • big reference sites, and a proven track record
    • marketing assistance (powered by... kind of stuff)
    • accountability
    Some of these areas are a real opportunity for third parties, once XORP gets to be a solid product, but the image, brand, reputation, etc will be hard to overcome in the short to medium term. In the longer term, the Linux model shows it is possible (though it's hardly inevitable - it's not the only open router free cisco type project, after all).

    Still, the marketing side matters less in a tech-savvy small/medium enterprise, or in a consultancy operation. It might get a start there, or in a more cost-sensitive environment.

    And open source can even be argued to confer security advantages. It could get interesting...

  • This could get interesting if H/W manufacturers eventually start producing specialized hardware to run XORP.

    The issue right now is that higher end router gear runs on specialized hardware like ASICS etc. You can not get that kind of performance from general use CPUs...
  • I would think that other router vendors would be hurt first. The most common reason I read that people buy non-Cisco equipment is cost. If an open-source router works well, it will eat away at the market share of the cheapest vendors first. This could actually help Cisco fight off the competition.
  • the level of trust a purchaser must have in their router investment is even higher than the bar for their OS. It is embedded equipment from the perspective of most users, akin to telco equipment and, of course, connected to and perforce compatible with telco equipment. The rowdy world of open source products and solutions does not yet command that level of respect in any market...even where we know, for instance, some open source operating systems having long track records of superior security and perform
  • They support their stuff. On more than on occasion, I've seen them come out with a fix a real problem, after you tell them about it. They actually provide a service of substance to their customers. Try calling Msoft and complaining about explorer bugs.
  • From the XORP FAQ [xorp.org]:

    Software forwarding plane limits forwarding rate

    For small workplace settings / lan routing where a little added latency and limited bandwidth is not an issue this is a great solution and companies like cisco will probably see their market share eroded a bit.

    However, backbone routing, especially anything with packet shaping, is not going to be software only driven for a while simply because the customized ICUs in routers are so much better at this then commoditiy hardware.
  • 4# Is XORP in competition with the commerical router vendors?

    XORP is primarily a research project. We're not competing with router vendors, we're interested in facilitating routing research - providing researchers with a platform where they can try out routing ideas. The code is open source since it's hard to help the research community without providing the source code.

  • The article should also address the new opportunities that arise. For example, a smart vendor could develop XORP optimised hardware platform. What this would mean is that you have the choice of:

    1. free open source XORP you can run on commodity hardware, and the price is good, but the performance isn't so good;

    2. free open source XORP bundled with high performance hardware, using, say, custom packet processing silicon, etc: the performance good, but the price higher.

    Everyone gets to win: the hackers and l
  • I ranted pro-Cisco for years running an ISP in a Major US Market(tm). And at the time, it made sense -- no one could touch Cisco for support, features, and availability.

    Today, however, the story is different. In particular, using an inexpensive small form-factory PC (especially one with no moving parts, even a fan), you can have a router for $500 that outperforms a Cisco router costing ten times as much -- and has more features!

    MikroTik [mikrotik.com] RouterOS has replaced Cisco as the routing core for my network

  • What's a router? We have switches. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @04:37PM (#10966768) Homepage Journal
    The point being we really don't use routers anymore. We use switches because they can keep pace with the price performance we need to maintain. Routers work ok but up to a point, then the economics and complexity of managing ever increasing bandwidth, endpoints and whatnot makes routers, even free routers not cost effective.

    Remember people YOU are the most expensive element, not the machine. YOU are.

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