nate wrote: > Christopher Chan wrote: > >> You are kidding right? Them expensive boxes run on Linux? There was a F5 >> box that was loaned to the company I worked for previously for testing >> and they had some really big claims about its ability to process emails >> and about its mail queue data integrity guarantees. > > you got it > [root at prod-lb-1:Active] config # uname -a > Linux prod-lb-1.sea2.my.domain 2.4.21-9.1.1.30.0smp #2 SMP Sat Oct 22 > 02:08:57 PDT 2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux > [root at prod-lb-1:Active] config # ssh root at sccp > Last login: Tue Jan 22 00:27:25 2008 from 10.10.0.146 > > Welcome to the F5 Networks SCCP! > > sccp# uname -a > Linux sccp 2.4.23-sccp SCCP Linux build 9.2.90.76.6 Tue Dec 13 05:55:27 PST > 2005 ppc unknown > sccp# > > (the Big IPs contain two independent computers in one chassis) > > Never used them for email processing. But work quite well for > load balancing. Easy to use, fast, quite a bit of features. I played > around a bit with LVS is it? about a year ago. The one killer feature > it didn't have that I require(d) was NAT'ing the traffic so I could > bounce connections back onto the same network. I didn't see any such > ability in LVS at the time anyways, maybe it's there now. Well, they had one that had amazing throughput with guarantees of not losing any emails once the box has accepted them for delivery. > > My network switches run linux too(I think some commercial embedded > flavor), as does my storage array(SSH banner says Debian at least). > Neither give access to a native linux shell though. Shit, even my > new Phillips TV runs linux. Crazy seems like almost everything does > these days. Haha. Yes, I know that more and more appliances are getting Linux based control systems but I am certainly very interested in how they got a box running a 2.4 version of Linux to perform like what I saw. I had upgraded the mailservers of the company to get a bit more performance by moving to 2.6 but F5 runs a 2.4.x Linux kernel and has a single box perform better than a cluster of the mailservers I upgraded to 2.6?! What do they have in those boxes? ASICs doing smtp and dns that somehow create zero network latency? What patches do they have in their souped up sccp version?