And Paul Traina wrote something vaguely similar.
I think you guys are both missing what I think was Jon's original point: Routers forward packets faster than PCs, but the forwarding function and the routing protocol function do not have to reside on the same box. You can add a PC (workstation, whatever) which runs the routing protocol and stuffs routes into the router. It doesn't have to support the link-layer du jour. Ethernet will do the job just fine.
As I recall the original discussion was of colocating a router, to forward packets, with a workstation, to compute routes.
So what would the normal implementation of such a design be? ebgp-multihop all of your peers into the PC, and then a single peering session the Cisco, presuming no "next-hop-self" routes? I can see some amount of value in such a design, if it could be made to work correctly. Does anybody have the spare equipment to build a lab? (pfeh, yeah, right) Dave -- Dave Siegel Director of Engineering, Net99 http://www.webcity.com/ (602)249-1083 24x7 NOC line http://www.rtd.com/~dsiegel/ (520)318-0696 My Tucson Office