Comparable to a Cisco router?

[Shish]

As I know some of you guys here are or have been interested in using software routing, I thought you might like a look at this.
http://www.vyatta.com/

It is a "live cd" runnable system (ie, needs no install as such) open source and free (unless you want commercial support) proper router run on a cli basis (like Cisco and Juniper)(no gui as yet but hey! it`s fairly new). Comparable to Cisco but likely any Juniper guys will be comfy with it and it`s not so much like a firewall as IPCOP and friends and runs on most x86 hardware and 64bit systems with most of the full blown router protocols.
Nice to play with anyway and a good community for support and questions but it is fairly recent.
I`m not involved with the site at all, just thought it worth a look.

[PCZ]

PC based routers are useful.
The CPU's in modern PC's have massive grunt compared to 'proper' routers.

Granted routers do have ASIC's to take the load off the CPU somewhat but some tasks just eat up all the memory and hit the CPU hard.

Where they fall down though is interface support.
Copper ethernet and SC fibre gig is no problem but everything else with the exception of ADSL cards are difficult to obtain and very pricey.

Try getting POS cards for them.
Tried getting an OC48 card in PC world lately ?

What they are exceptionally good for is natting.
You can have hundreds of RFC 1918 clients behind one all hitting the Internet hard and they don't break sweat.
Load it up with ACL's and a FW for good measure and CPU load will still be low.

Another good use for a PC based router is BGP.
With the amount of memory you can have in a PC they have no problem holding full tables.

[IronBits]

I agree with you PCZ. Shish, is that basically the same thing as smoothwall ?

[Shish]

Shoogar...lost that one somewhere...too much on the go at once, forgot I was vncìng as well.

Start again.
Not really looked too hard at Smooth and as the man says, fergit about OC48,FR etc, it`s a bit young yet but it may get there with the open source idea. Certainly ideal for a non profit or suchlike, mebbe a small college whatever and good for anybody getting into Cisco/Juniper etc especially as you have to use a cli. And it`s got the main high end protocols as in OSPF, BGRP etc so it`s capable enough and bang it on a spare x86 and you`ve got bang for buck compared to a Cisco 7200 or similar (certainly compared to a one which has eaten several psu`s and likes sticks of ram for a feast now and again) and it will run headless from a serial connect console.
Even 2nd hand Ciscos from a college (at the prices they pay for them) can be expensive to learn all the labs on so it`s good hands on stuff and any network guy worth his salt will fall right in to it so I guess a lot of independant contractors will use it.
More for commercial than just your average Lauren size network I guess but worth keeping an eye on I think, and certainly usable as a router as opposed to just a firewall with routing as it also has the usual suspects like dhcp etc.

[gopher_yarrowzoo]

Hmm sounds like fun I had a "PC based router" running Kerio WinRoute Pro they updated it and well added content filtering which well erm I couldn't find a way to turn off (god bless backups) but it would every so often run out of DNS forwards :| or some such crap and needed a swift kick (simply enough to do)
I have the same problem now with my current POS carp Router - never buying D-LINK again, they are normally good this model is crap and mine ain't the only one lots of people have probs with the model :|
So me on look out now for one that can either handle a USB modem - Thomson Speedtouch to the rescue or work good and ain't to hard to config