Signs of life in open source routers

I continue to believe network hardware could show some of the strongest benefits from open source. Vyatta, the company leading the charge on open network hardware has a couple of news announcements that bear this out - a low-cost small business router and tests that show it leaving Cisco in the dust, performance-wise.

The Vyatta 514 includes routing, firewall, and VPN in a small box costing $697. The company claims its systems offer a big saving over proprietary routers - and last week tested the claim on its larger product, announcing results from the Tolly Group that show its routers, which cost a quarter the price of Cisco's 7200, perform two to three times better.

Vyatta calculates a 10x performance advantage from this, and says it blows apart the myth that you need the magic of proprietary hardware to get good network performance.