Linespeed is pretty fast, and there's a lot moving through. Routers are a bit like GNU grep -- they way to be fast is to not touch most of the data.
The more you have to touch, and the deeper you have to touch it, the more expensive it gets.
The real trick is figuring out what's good, what's evil, and downrating the latter whilst allowing the good. Given peering relations, BGP routing, and the sorry state of much of those protocols, tracing problems to their source, quickly, and getting a useful response, is difficult.
The more you have to touch, and the deeper you have to touch it, the more expensive it gets.
The real trick is figuring out what's good, what's evil, and downrating the latter whilst allowing the good. Given peering relations, BGP routing, and the sorry state of much of those protocols, tracing problems to their source, quickly, and getting a useful response, is difficult.