Software (Sygate) vs Hardware (Netgear RF114) NAT Performance

[Pugi]

Which one will be faster? I don't care about the features, all that matters is the higher performance.

Sygate would be running on:

Dual Pentium IIs 350
512megs of ram
Win2K Server

 

[mgpaulus]

I think either will be plenty fast enough, since most connections out to the ISP are limited to 1.5Mb anyway.

However, the plus in my decision for a Netgear RT311 was that I have a standalone, dedicated, less prone to failure, independant hardware device doing my NAT, and I don't have to worry about a PC gateway crashing, or going down for hardware maintenance/upgrades, or a slowdown/lockup due to a buggy Micro$oft OS (Sygate runs on Win9x/ME/NT/2K/XP).

The Netgear is dedicated to what it does, and it does it pretty darn well......

 

[Woodchuck2000]

Given that really hefty cisco routers tend to run on 25mhz motorola chips, I think a dual PII ought to manage quite nicely

What do you mean by performance? I think that both in terms of latency and throughput you'll be hard pressed to tell the difference.

 

[Agamar]

I use sygate with my P-II 300 with 192M of ram. I also use the machine as a file server (all running Win95B) and firewall (ZoneAlarm). I have a DSL connecting with speeds clocked at 1250/205 (connect at 1475/256). I would go ahead and use the machine... That way you get a place to put files on.