Some quick responses
I'm an employee at Vyatta... I'll give a shot at responding to some of the questions:
We have measured packet latency times, RFC2544 compliant testing, using a Smartbits on multiple different hardware platforms. Latency is on the order of tens of microseconds, depending on the hardware tested, which is comparable to a Cisco device. Performance is comparable right now up to the 7200 throughput range. In the near future performance is only going to increase as x86 processors scale up the number of cores, PCIe and MSI allow for packet flow affinity to those individual cores, and memory bottlenecks, such as the front side bus, are eliminated. (Come on Nehalem!!!)
For the Tolly test, we were limited to three ports only because that is what is physically on the NPE-G2. When you add a fourth port into the mix with a PA you start to run traffic over the 7200 backplane and throughput on it falls through the floor. At that point it's not really an apples to apples test any more. And for the record, we have users who are looking at million+ route tables because they are finding it increasingly difficult to aggregate IPv6 routes.
We do support serial cards from DSL to DS3 with plans to deliver OC3 in the future. So we're not limited to ethernet. And the number of features may surprise you, take a look! No we don't have NBAR right now, but we will have a L7 filtering solution soon. And we love community feedback and suggestions. It helps us schedule deliverables. So if there is a specific feature you are looking for that we don't have jump on the forums and let us know.
As for the 6509s/7609s AC mentioned, they are 100k+ boxes... Vyatta Community is free. Vyatta support contracts are $647. That's a significant difference. Anyway, Vyatta was not designed to be a core router a la 7600/GSR. But it does work very well in in many applications. It may not satisfy everyone's topology requirements, but we think we have put together a pretty good network appliance that meets the needs of many. All in all, it gives people options. Jump on the community forums and take a look at how people are using it.
One other quick comment... a plug maybe. Our customers love our support guys. Our VP of Support is, errr... dedicated when it comes to getting customer sat responses. And 9 out of 10 customers said our support team was better than the competition. ;)
Cheers!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
