Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 13:21:28 +0100 From: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com> To: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, "Andrew C. Hornback" <achornback@worldnet.att.net>, "FreeBSD Questions" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: DSL PPPoE with 2 NICs Message-ID: <001c01c16e99$3ba2a110$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <002701c16e80$d0b0c700$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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Ted writes: > Not for the real cheapos. Crap like the LinkSys > router requires that you be on the same physical > network when you do your firmware upgrading because > the router generally won't allow remote firmware > updates ... That's the kind of behavior I'd prefer from a router. I don't want remote firmware updates to be allowed except from the LAN side. It keeps the rest of the world out. To me this is a feature, not a drawback. > You cannot run any kind of an enterprise with > that sort of thing. If you have only one LAN, or only a few in physical proximity, it seems entirely practical to me. You don't need to update firmware very often (if ever), anyway. > For a REAL router like a Cisco 1605-R, firmware > updates can be done remotely quite easily. But the > cost is much higher for the device. Unless there is a desperate need to perform such updates remotely, there is no point in spending the extra money for a fancier router. > For starters you can terminate remote VPN links > on a FreeBSD system, how many $100 routers can > you do that on? The one I use does exactly that. It can and does maintain a remote VPN link with the DSL modem. That is one of its selling points, and that is one reason why I bought it (it is much easier to have the router handle this than to try to get it to work on FreeBSD). > You can also run a proxy server on your FreeBSD > system, and force all your inside clients to use > that, so you can spy on where they are surfing. If you don't need a proxy and you don't wish to spy, this is irrelevant. > You can set your router up as a network monitoring > device and if the link to the Internet goes down > your BSD system can send you a page. The cheapo router can send a message to syslog on the machine of your choice, which can then alert anyone. > In short, there's lots of things that you can do > with your FreeBSD system that a hardware router > cannot do. There are lots of things you can do with a FreeBSD system that you really have no need to do. And if you don't need these things, you don't need FreeBSD. > Nobody building any network large enough to deserve > the label "IT infrastructure" is going to be fooling > around with $100 cheapie routers. What is the minimum size of a network that may legally quality as "IT infrastructure"? In any case, any network as large as you imply isn't going to be relying on PCs running an unsupported, free OS to replace real routers, either--not if they can afford Cisco. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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