From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Oct 2 16:16:43 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 913EE37B409 for ; Wed, 2 Oct 2002 16:16:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp-send.myrealbox.com (smtp-send.myrealbox.com [192.108.102.143]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1E40243E6E for ; Wed, 2 Oct 2002 16:16:41 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jolok@myrealbox.com) Received: from inspectorbox jolok@smtp-send.myrealbox.com [130.94.160.46] by smtp-send.myrealbox.com with NetMail SMTP Agent $Revision: 3.12 $ on Novell NetWare; Wed, 02 Oct 2002 17:16:36 -0600 Message-ID: <00f801c26a69$7d3bb310$7404e9c6@inspectorbox> From: "Joshua Lokken" To: "Fernando Gleiser" , "James Earl" Cc: References: <20021002171038.O81915-100000@cactus.fi.uba.ar> Subject: Re: advise on gateway-setup Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 16:14:41 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1106 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG ----- Original Message ----- From: "Fernando Gleiser" To: "James Earl" Cc: Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 1:26 PM Subject: Re: advise on gateway-setup > On Wed, 2 Oct 2002, James Earl wrote: > > > > > I'm in a similar position, but on a smaller scale. I'm trying to figure > > out where these Switched Gateway/Routers/Firewall/VPN devices that are > > coming on the market fit in, and where it is better to use our favorite > > FreeBSD machine to do the work? Would I be wrong in assuming these little > > hardware devices are faster at the job than a FreeBSD machine? > > In my opinion, unless a) you have a corporate policy which says what to > deploy or b) you have a very large scale project which needs "Big Iron" > or c) you need dedicated hardware/software only available for the "hardware > solution" (ie EIGRP, or some very specialized WAN card) there is no reason > to install a dedicated "hardware solution" instead of a BSD box. > > They may be atractive in the beginning, but you need to factor the > costs and availability of support, software licences/updates, replacement > parts and the like. Have you ever asked how much an extra 100BT card for > a Cisco costs? :) > > One of the main advantages of the BSD/Linux solution is the hardware > availability. If a NIC blows, you can get another one in less than one > hour for less than $80. You don't need a dedicated (Cisco|Nokia|whoever) > hardware. I have a question. I also run a FreeBSD gateway/firewall, but have read in the sysadmin handbook and at FreeBSD.org that it is not recommended to use a *NIX system in this capacity. Why? Thanks, Joshua To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message