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I am setting up my server lab, can you please recommend an affordable and very reliable router than can handle over 100,000 simultaneous open tcp connections without breaking a sweat?

Thanks!

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    Define "affordable" and the min. number of ports.
    – Jonathan Allen
    Jul 20, 2010 at 7:23
  • @jonathan - let me strike affordable and say mid-range. min ports is 4
    – Charles Okwuagwu
    Jul 20, 2010 at 8:50
  • If it's just a router, the number of TCP connections doesn't matter at all. Routers just forward packets based on IP addresses. If you're looking for addional functionality (such as NAT, firewalling, etc. that is oten built into routers, then the answer is... complicated). Your best bet is to find something that meets your needs based on the spec sheet, and then get a demo unit and test to see if it meets your needs. You might just be better off dealing with a software router running on a decent server if it is a test lab.
    – rmalayter
    Nov 11, 2010 at 4:56

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When you say "handle over 100,000 simultaneous open tcp connections", what do you actually mean? A router that is capable of having that number of TCP connections flowing through it? That can handle that number of TCP connections terminating on it (SSH or telnet sessions to it, web requests to the built-in web server, FTP connections to the built-in FTP server)? That can sensibly do flow-based decisions on 100k+ flows?

If it's "just" TCP sessions flowing through it and being routed, what's the expected number of packets per second for each flow? If you're looking at ~10 pps per session, you're looking at (at least) 1 Mpps through the router.

According to this document:

  • A Cisco 7200 can handle up to 2 Mpps
  • A Cisco 7600 can handle up to 15 Mpps

So, depending on what you mean by "handle 100k TCP sessions", it looks like the 7200 is towards the lower end of what you want.

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