Is it better to use linux or say a cisco/nortel or some other router for T1's?? I have been looking at Cyclades (www.cyclades.com) PC 300 cards and Sangoma (www.sangoma.com) S514 cards and some from SBE (www.sbei.com). I would like to know if Linux and one of these cards is better then a cisco 2620XM. Should I load the firewall right on this computer or would it only do routing?? Can I also load the proxy on that computer. What I am looking at is I will have a computer with an AMD 64 with 2GB of ram and 2 WD360GD hard drives as Mirrored boot Drives and 2 WD740GD Mirrored Data Drives. Then I would Have Routerboard 44 4 port Ethernet card (www.routerboard.com) and then a Sangoma S5147 Dual port T1 Card. (Or there equivalents depending on recommendations). also what distrobution of linux would you recommend for this?

Dan

I think it depends on the kind of load and network traffic is expected.

The Cisco 2620 would probably out run the pc when comming to performance.
With the pc you could make more precise configurations and firewall rules.
On the other hand, the less services that a gateway/firewall run the more secure.
A breached pc could be use to attack your internal networks in a way that a hardware router like 2620 would never be possible to.

I don't know what the hardware specs are for throughput on a Cisco 2620, although I have used them.

Fact is, you are using a T1 which is 1.544 MBps. An i386 computer with something around 1GHz and 256 MB of memory will be able to handle a much greater load and run other services than a 2620.

If you want to consolidate services like a firewall/squid server as a choke point for your network then go ahead and use the card. It will probably be easier for you plus more cost effective.

If you had something like Dual OC-3+ then you need the Cisco equipment. Basically what you are doing is nothing different than a smoothwall box sitting on a DSL line, other than a dedicated circuit and more expensive interfacing equipment.

If you are looking for ease of use then you could go with RedHat. Personally I would go with Slack or Gentoo. Gentoo gives you the portage and you can install all your necessary stuff from there...depending on what you want to do.

An AMD64 with 2GB of RAM is gross overkill for this application.

I also noticed that this card http://www.sangoma.com/products/p_s514-et1-specs.htm supports FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. You may want to consider OpenBSD for this project. Their ip filter or pf is extremely powerful. Check out FreeBSD ipfw2 also.

According to cisco the 2620 is able to handle up to 30kpps
If we take mtu to be 1500 then it could handle a throughput of ~420 Mbit/s.

I plan on going to multiple T1 lines withing a year. I am delivering high speed broadband the last mile. SO I may have 8 T1 lines in the one computer. will gen-too and Slackware load balance those lines? if a AMD64 is over kill for running the firewall and proxy on the same computer with one T1 but is it with 8 T1? I don't know I am just learning Linux as a server I have been running it as a desktop for a couple years now just before kernel 2.4 I remember upgrading my linux for dummies distro. But I am doing dial up service now and it is a whole new thing to go into broadband.. I know networking and understand it with novell and windows but I am still learning Linux... Windows and novel you can't ever have to much CPU or Ram and I know I need to change that but is there a scale to go by??? Like I know I have 15 Dial in modems for every 50 users. and I have no problems with it but what is the CPU scale for linux??? I know I am offering 128k, 256,512 and 768k connections. I figure as I need them Plug in a dual port card and add one then another T1 and then another card.. I have even seen a Couple DS3 cards would it be better to spring for one of those and just get what I need from the circuit? Well I know I am new to Linux but not Networking. Let me know please...

You would have to check the manufacturer to see if their drivers support load balancing over the multiple links. Seeing how you want to scale out, I would go ahead and get the Cisco gear. Their stuff will do what you want out of the box.