umm. The Cisco 25xx routers at my work support telnet (ick) as the only
protocol for remote administration. Telnet sends passwords in clear text
over the internet.
The Linux routers I set up have exactly one port open -- ssh. Ssh is
good for security, telnet is bad.
Furthermore, I can put any additional stuff I want an the linux box.
For example -- I needed to restrict the bandwidth to certain colocated
servers sitting behind the Linux router. I downloaded iproute2, and set
up some rather specialized bandwidth controls that would otherwise have
cost _major_ amounts of money. With Linux the whole Linux router cost
about $500 (with 4 100baseT NICs even). With your avarage Cisco, you pay
a huge premium for their custom NICs. Ours cost $20 each.
> 2) Better reliabilty: Routers have no hard drives AFAIK or other PC
> components that could unexpectedly fail. If it does acutally fail, just unplug
> it and replace it. PCs tend to need long configuration phases.
Backups work well. If my Linux router falls over, I can restore the
important config files from backup to a different box in under an
hour.(I pipe tar via ssh over the network to run backups). Even with a
cisco, you would want to have a spare lying around (or a very expensive
service contract), and backups of your config files...
> 3) Smaller: when you have 6-7 servers in a room, you are really happy for small
> devices, and if routers are anything like switches in size, they are much
> smaller than any computer.
So buy your router in a 1U or 2U rackmount case. You can get a very nice
Linux box in a 1 rack unit case for about $1000.
> 4) Lots of pretty lights (not sure if routers have them though): Pretty lights
> send people into trances, great for bosses :).
None of my Cisco boxes have any pretty lights. Sorry to disappoint.
> Of course, all of my arguements are probably bogus or can be worked around.
>
> Keeping the flames burning,
Sizzle, sizzle. :)
-Erik
--
Erik B. Andersen Web: http://www.xmission.com/~andersen/
email: andersee@debian.org
--This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-net" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu