Sun Aug 17, 2014 7:29 am
What is your total bandwidth requirements? You speak of 3 or 4 WAN connections in pcc, that means that you could be looking at 8gbps throughput. At those speeds over x86 hardware you need to start looking at your pcie bandwidth and the block diagram of the motherboard to make sure it can handle the load with decent latency (without maxing out the bus).
If you do go with an x86 setup be sure to use 1 four port card for the wan and a 10gb card for thr lan. Doing it that way will maximize the lanes you have available. Without looking into it too far, iirc some dual processor boards handle the pcie lanes differently than single processor boards so be sure to check out the block diagrams for any mobo you consider.
In the end I don't think that an x86 solution is a good idea in your situation. It is not going to be any cheaper than the 1036, it is going to add a "custom" layer of complexity to yohr setup and if any hardware compatability issues arrise, your screwed. Swapping out a ccr for a ccr is easy, even for a network tech in the field. Swapping out a bad stick of memory might not be.
All that being said, depending on the average packet size the 1036 should handle it.