Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 2 Oct 2002 17:26:50 -0300 (ART)
From:      Fernando Gleiser <fgleiser@cactus.fi.uba.ar>
To:        James Earl <james@icionline.ca>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: advise on gateway-setup
Message-ID:  <20021002171038.O81915-100000@cactus.fi.uba.ar>
In-Reply-To: <20021002122555.3b9bc77c.james@icionline.ca>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
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.



				Fer

>
> James
>
> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
> with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
>


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20021002171038.O81915-100000>