Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 17:38:34 +0930 (CST) From: Peter Childs <pjchilds@imforei.apana.org.au> To: D.Inksetter@saidev.com (Derek Inksetter), freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD as a PPP server Message-ID: <199610030808.RAA25042@al.imforei.apana.org.au>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
In article <52uk4s$hms@al.imforei.apana.org.au> you wrote: : Forgive me if this is a FAQ It should probably be in the handbook as a server-ppp setup.. but it isn't yet :) : I want to use FreeBSD as a dial-up PPP server, with 4-8 modems hanging : off the back end. Most (all?) of the users would be using Windows 95 or : NT, but there may be a few others. : What I need to know is: : 1. What multiport serial board will incur the least overhead? Do they all : incur about the same interrupt overhead or is there some "smartness" : that the kernel can take advantage of with some? There's also the : question of reliability. Ok.. i'll give you a run down of what we use... 2x Cyclades Cyclom 16Ye ISA boards (16 ports each) and a AST type 4 port to make a total of 38 ports on our dialup server. : 2. Is there a real difference between user-mode ppp (iijppp?) and : kernel-mode WRT performance? I would think it would, especially as you : add more serial ports. I guess so... The userland ppp code is quite slick but i haven't used the kernel land stuff. : 3. What kind of machine will do the job? I'd think a 486/66 will handle a : few ports simultaneously, but where's the cutoff point? Maybe the : answers to questions 1&2 affect this one. We have a 486dx33 with 8mb RAM and a pretty small disk. All it does is service the dialup lines.. and it works a treat. Before someone cut the power we had 51 days up no sweat :) : There must be lots of people out there who use FreeBSD for this purpose. : Maybe someone can relate their experiences with some particular hardware. For using with win95 dialup I suggest taking a look at the work i did with userland ppp. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi-bin/query-pr.cgi?pr=1494 contains the patches to 2.1-stable's ppp to allow autonegotiation of NetBIOS nameservers and DNS servers with win95 clients. Alternatively i've packaged up some "distributions" with sample config files etc at (slow site.. really slow.. :) ftp://ftp.imforei.apana.org.au/pub/freebsd/ppp-plus (versions for 2.1.x and 2.2-current.. including a diff against -current) Peter -- Peter Childs --- http://www.imforei.apana.org.au/~pjchilds Finger pjchilds@al.imforei.apana.org.au for public PGP key Drag me, drop me, treat me like an object!
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199610030808.RAA25042>