nanog mailing list archives

RE: Followup British Telecom outage reason


From: Patrick Greenwell <patrick () cybernothing org>
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 22:49:43 -0800 (PST)


On Wed, 28 Nov 2001, Christian Kuhtz wrote:


I guess some time someone will realize routers are both
hardware, and software, and shock horror both, if done
well, can actually add value. [hint & example: compare the
scheduler on, say, Linux/FreeBSD, Windows 95 (sic),
and your favourite router OS (*); pay particular attention
to suitability for running realtime, or near realtime tasks,
where such tasks may occasionally crash or overrun their
expected timeslice; note how the best OS amongst the
bunch for this aint exactly great].

(*) results may vary according to personal choice here.

Don't use a non-realtime OS for something that you expect realtime or
near-realtime OS functionality.  There are specific systems to address these
kinds of needs with rather complicated scheduling mechanism to accomodate
such requirements in a sensible manner.

Is IOS a realtime operating system?  No.  Are any of the other listed OS
realtime operating systems?  No.

Actually there are multiple Linux-based RTOSes.


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