How do I select a vro with a larger Internet cafe scale? (1)

As Internet cafes expand, new problems may occur in their network systems. As routers of key devices, they have become the focus of consideration. This article is a practical experience of Internet cafe network deployment by Internet cafe practitioners for many years and has great practical value.

With the development of Internet cafes in China over the past 10 years, I have witnessed the ups and downs of Internet cafes in the past 10 years. In the past 10 years, Internet cafes, under the dual force of competition and policy, have been in a transitional period from quantitative change to qualitative change, and have begun to develop towards standardization and scale.

Does a router determine the operating lifeline of an internet cafe?

As Internet cafes continue to expand and the network environment becomes more and more complex, the requirements for network devices are constantly increasing. If a good device is selected, the device can provide technical services. If a bad device is selected, the technology will never end up serving the product. Therefore, I keep a high degree of attention on new products and technologies.

Take the router as an example. Although the Internet cafe router accounts for a very small proportion of the investment in the entire Internet cafe, it determines to a large extent whether the Internet cafe can operate stably.

Of course, it is unrealistic for many Internet cafes to expect a good router to cope with various complex network environments. It is unfair to attribute the various problems in the network to the vro. Network stability is related to many factors, such as network structures, systems, viruses, and even access methods, which affect the stability of Internet cafes. However, the performance of various routers in complex environments is indeed quite different. Therefore, choosing a good router can be of great help to the stability of the network.

Internet cafe routing requires a larger scale

With the continuous expansion of Internet cafes, large-scale Internet cafes have new requirements on the number of routers, forwarding rate, stability, and anti-virus capabilities. I expanded an internet cafe from April to 160 in 360. At that time, the Internet cafe owner chose a router that claimed to be able to carry 2000 machines, the vro uses an IXP processor. The result is that a problem occurs during the peak period. Later, even if the vro of the ixp platform of another brand cannot solve the problem, the vro finally uses a soft route.

Although many manufacturers of IXP vrouters claim to be able to carry more than 300 machines, my practical experience tells me that the reliability is low and the feasibility is lower, at least in the internet cafe industry. In the enterprise environment, whether or not more than 300 servers can work stably, I have not tried it, So I dare not talk about it.

Based on my own practical experience, currently, only the following options can be used stably in more than 300 Internet cafes:

Soft route

It is represented by RouterOS, m0n0Wall, SmoothWall, Ipcop, CoyoteLinux, etc.

Hardware routing:

Ruijie NBR2000

H3C AR18-63-1

Flying Fish star VOLANS-6300, VOLANS-6200

Xiaonuo g3161100

I had the honor to have used NBR2000, AR18-63-1 and flying fish star VOLANS-6300, and I put them into a class-"Full Gigabit hard routing ". These products basically use 64-bit processor internal and external network full Gigabit products (of course, the hardware solutions of different manufacturers are different ). Next I will compare the "soft routing" and "Full Gigabit hard routing" in terms of the number of hosts, forwarding rate, stability, anti-virus capabilities, purchase costs, and use costs.