On 02/09/06 00:04, Diana Eichert wrote:
On Wed, 8 Feb 2006, eric wrote:
On Wed, 2006-02-08 at 15:21:19 -0700, Diana Eichert proclaimed...
Can you do line rate 10G/OC192 with your card?
Last I heard only Endace could; and they're not supported.
the metanetworks 10G can
Since also "OC192" was mentioned I believe it's not so easy to say without
further information.
Lets put in the OpenBSD plug first: Yes OpenBSD is fully supported with the FT-x
card.
Disclaimer: I didn't know anything of metanetworks http://www.metanetworks.org/
and their products before I saw the link on this list a few hours ago. Up to a
minute ago I never heard of Endace http://www.endace.com/ .
Claimer: I work for IDD http://idd.nl/ and know a thing or two of our card and
if if I don't know it I can ask people here about the last details.
http://www.metanetworks.org/products.html
http://www.endace.com/images/E2DAG6.2Lge.jpg
http://idd.nl/ft/pci.jpg
As probably anyone here can see on the pictures there is a big difference
between the cards. The IDD card has large memory banks which seem to lack on the
other cards (I might be wrong on this, couldn't see the back of the cards on the
pictures.).
These memory banks of up to 256MB per channel allow us to "unpack" not only
Gigabit Ethernet, Packet over Sonet but also MPLS, ATM and L2TP for two channels
at up to 2.5Gbps in real time. As far as I know it's the only card in the world
of this type with that arrangement and flexibility.
Other differences I see: Metanetworks claims Jumbo frames, we don't (don't know
if that's a hard limit, no customer has ever asked for it). As far as I see the
Endace card and our card only monitor, we do repeat a retimed to Sonet specs
optical signal. Metaworks claims to be able to "Filter out viruses and worms
with approximately 1 5s latency" and "wirespeed URI decoding" I cannot take that
seriously without further specifications. [(URI as being "URL" like http:// ?
And where? also from compressed http streams too?]
We manufacture our card on request of Dutch internet providers for lawful
interceptions, tapping their networks. (In the Netherlands providers tap and
deliver the tapped info to a government institution named "ULI" (formerly
"LIO"). ULI delivers to police and intelligence services. So the government
doesn't tap itself, as much checks and balances as you can think of.) The card
is a good solution for a few formerly almost untappable holes in their networks.
By the way, designing such a card is almost only a matter of both knowledge and
skill, we did it in 6 weeks flat, (one small and fortunately fixable bug because
of a bad specified part, nobody is perfect...). Manufacturing is a disaster,
pointless to start with the good old soldering iron (that's like asking Dave
Feustel to code a more secure new OpenBSD kernel without the big lock...), the
ball-grid arrays and fine pitch high-speed parts need state of the art robot
handling, soldering and x-ray inspection. Assembly of a single card costs about
2000E excluding the setup costs and without any parts. Very few assembly
companies can do this reliably in small quantities.
Software took some more time but we have our own quite complete library of
single cycle algorithms now. With modern gate arrays and memory interfaces 2x
10GE seems no serious problem to me, getting serious customers for it, need
interesting quantities, is.
And above all... Understanding almost all details of the Internet with a small
team and getting it work is definitely fun!
+++chefren
<end of plug, I will donate if something serious comes from this>
