Tue Feb 15, 2011 5:11 pm
I don't think that's a good idea because it's impossible to specify what should have priority, so under strained load it'll start doing whatever task you don't want it to do. At 100% load, is it more important to route the packets of already authenticated users, or to authenticate new users? Or to monitor the network? Split those tasks between different devices less you have a very small network.
It's hard to recommend hardware without knowing what you are planning to do on your edge router. Will connection tracking be on (required for NAT, queuing, many firewall features)? How many connections/packets per second? How much throughput? If QoS, what kind of QoS, and implemented how? If firewalling, what kind of ruleset? L7 is a lot more expensive than dropping all traffic to port tcp/10000.
The more details you give, the more specific an answer people can give you.