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I haven't, but OpenBSD 4.2 is a great router. Does OSPF and BGP and it's FREE.

Disclaimer in that I work for Vyatta.

The short answer to your question is "absolutely yes!" We have many community members and customers using Vyatta in production in a virtualized context, either with VMware or Xen, and it works quite well. There are limits to using it virtualized, however, because you would be sharing the system with other processing. That's purely a performance and scalability issue, however, and for many smaller applications this works just fine.

If you want to go big, we have customers who have replaced Cisco 7200s with Vyatta. We just completed a test showing how Vyatta running on a $3500 IBM 1U server (quad-core Xeon) is faster and more scalable than a $30,000 Cisco 7200.

Finally, Vyatta works great in a teaching environment. We have many networking instructors using Vyatta classrooms. It eliminates a *lot* of expensive hardware and students can take it home and work on their own copy of things inside a virtual machine.

Thanks for checking out Vyatta! You'll find full router (RIP, OSPF, BGP), VLANs, firewall, VPN (site-to-site and client) and more.

The free version is available both at www.vyatta.com and at our community site at www.vyatta.org.

Please feel free to download our images (ISO, VMWare Appliance) or source code for your own use and modification.

Like Dave, I should have disclosed that I have a direct relationship with Vyatta (my venture capital firm helped to fund them).

Thanks for bringing up the subject ...
It's been a question in my mind regarding Vyatta for a while: in addition to all you said in your post, to make a real router with Vyatta how will you host serial or other type of connections (except for Ethernet) in a PC server?

According to http://www.vyatta.com/products/hardware_cat.php they support some Sangoma T1/E1 and T3 cards.

For teaching purposes I think Dynamips is the better option. (at least for teaching Cisco).

BSD or Linux works well if you´re in need of a low cost routing platform. I know of ISP who have run Zebra on Celeron-boxes for their BGP-routing.

Personally I would never replace dedicated purposebuilt routers like the ones from Cisco with virtual machines.

://Leo

I have tried to use Vyatta in its first incarnation and it worked a little bit, however the hardware was a problem and it would not stay stable, and would lose the configuration quite often. Also passwords would be lost and GUI change seem to be toast the whole thing so I quit. I think they will be hard pressed over time to replace Cisco. I do not believe there are many large companies that would be willing to leave the security of the world established Routing and Switching empire of Cisco with Vyatta just yet. Its is a nice goal, like replacing Microsoft or AppleMac. these are entirely posible. But highly improbable. Still worthwhile goals.
What if they try to develop a stable home use small appliance that you dont have to constantly reboot and and is easy to manage, that could be a way to start eating at the big boys. Beat out Linksys/Cisco, and all those SHO with a great product. Even build their own Proc (ASIC) for the unit with the ability to upgrade and add modules later for more functionality. Hmmm! maybe I should go work for the Vyagra...oops I mean Vyatta. I will definitely be looking at again.

In regardes to what KD has said, where is Vyatta going to get all the skilled people who can push and support their product, or are they going rely on Cisco to provide all the CCIE type people to do the spruiking for them?

How many CCIE's is Vyatta going to be able to find that are prepared to damage their own franchises.

Don't get me wrong -- I love dynamips...it has really helped with CCIE studies.

However, it is a reckless move to teach using dynamips. The legality of using it is still in limbo. I don't think the legal council of any school / university would approve of it's use in instruction.

For real fun talking about questions of virtualization with Cisco routers, check out the ASR 1000 announcements and IOS-XE which runs in a virtual machine on the Cisco hardware itself.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2008/prod_030408.html

disclaimer: I dont' work for Cisco, or Vyetta, just a plain ol' company that uses routers. :-)

Somehow, I doubt Vyatta will pose a serious threat to Cisco until they take on their switching offerings i.e. by building custom ASICs. Personally, I think their marketing is slightly misleading in this respect. (Well, it did make me run to their website and see what sort of L3 switches they had to challenge Cisco with :)

Hello

First i would like to say thanks to Jeremy for this great site.

As Steve said, Dynamips is the best emulator to get hands on training for Cisco products, trust me guys i plugged a Dynamips router at work and it worked as a read one :)

lol

Jeremy, it seems there is an error in here, i wrote that comment and now its under Mohammed's name! how could that be bro?

Thanks

I like their GUI bit, its just quite interesting.

Not a chance. There is a heck of a lot more to internetworking these days than just the ability to forward packets the fastest or run a few routing protocols. Cisco still offers the only solution to a great many problems, and they offer it in an integrated intuitive way. As time progresses you can hardly tell the difference between a high end catalyst or a router if your at the CLI setting it up. ASIC is still king for alot of functions, and cisco has really expanded. They are more than just a data network. They encompass voice and host security and a dozen other things. I dont think hocking a box that can forward packets a little faster for less cash is going to make a bit of differnece. The people looking purely for PPS are carriers running TENgigE's and OC192s...768s... on MPLS backbones. For most customers and carriers, the features and support and trust that cisco will always do what is needed with some of the smartest engineers on the planet to make that happen is worth significantly more than a box that can blindly forward more packets faster using a CPU with a pipeline longer than a freighttrain.

You have to look at the following! just for the fun of it:
http://www.vyatta.com/secret/dearjohn/index.php?s=pop

(Networkworld posted that link on there site)

Great article well written,thanks for bringing up the subject ...
It's been a question in my mind regarding this ...well written and great !!
by arul vigg

agree with michieltimmers!
great article! I've been also asking myself about this. how PC can change cisco routers and when!

So, how do you get the performance of a cisco router (hardware forwarding as opposed to actual packet processing) with vyatta?? Also, features that are programmed in hardware, such as qos, acls, inspection, ect (all with no hit to the processor)??

I am not confident that this can be accomplished with an IBM 1ru box running some software, as it takes many built in hardware asics to accomplish these great features that come in many routers these days.

Now, if you just simply want to use one of these servers as a standalone route reflector, then sure, I can see the use for that, but for actually pushing packets through with full features, I dont see it happening.

Interesting I am reading the trails here and surprised to find a Mutasem Bashkami? I recall a guy working at Dubai Municipality as a Food control person? How could he know about Cisco when he was never qualified? I remember him almost being homeless and asking people for money back then! Strange world we live in? He could hardly speak english back then! wow...the world is weird...bro? I think the guy still owes money in this country! hmmm....

The beauty of Vyatta is that you don't have to sit back and be skeptical about features or performance. It's open-source, you can download it and test it anytime you are ready.