On 2010-09-23, Rikky Taylor <rikkytay...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote: >> F.Y.I. >> I believe PF still? performs better on i386 than it does on amd64. > > So if i have a Sun X4100 should I install the i386 version of OpenBSD or > should I get different hardware for a firewall?
"performs better" depends on how you rate performance. Some people will consider raw forwarding speed. Others will consider number of states. I suspect i386 is better for one of these and certainly amd64 is for the other. If you run close enough to the limits that it makes a real difference, you should be testing both for yourself. > Isnt pretty much all hardware 64bit capable these days? No, there's a *lot* of hardware running on arm/mips processors which aren't. Granted not a lot of it is currently running OpenBSD, but still. If you're just talking about current-production x86-compatible hardware, a lot is 64-bit capable, but there are still e.g. geodes, older VIA designs etc, which are still quite widely used and 32-bit only.
