Date: Sat, 9 Dec 1995 11:58:32 -0600 (CST) From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com> To: winter@jurai.net (Matthew N. Dodd) Cc: sreid@edmbbs.iceonline.com, freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Hardware for ISP / WWW server Message-ID: <199512091758.LAA22167@brasil.moneng.mei.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.91.951209104352.7709B-100000@sasami> from "Matthew N. Dodd" at Dec 9, 95 10:57:40 am
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> > 28.8 kbps modems for dial-up > > Run dialup from a terminal server. A Livingston portmaster is a great > box and has a very hackable security server. (Um... no, rather its easy > to modify to suit your needs) Ewww, no way. A Livingston Portmaster has some pretty gnarly drawbacks: 1) has problems with subnets 2) requires you to waste IP addresses due to the way the thing reserves addresses for dropped connections 3) in the case of dropped connections totally bungles the way its handled 4) isn't really all that flexible 5) etc (my mind can't think this morning) I deal with sites that use FreeBSD as terminal servers and sites that use Portmasters as terminal servers. Invariably the sites with Portmasters have all sorts of bizarro hacks in place to try to get around various problems and limitations that these stupid devices seem to cause and/or impose. If you want a "real" terminal server, buy an Annex. If you want a more flexible solution than either of these two, go get a dedicated FreeBSD box. With the price of a 486DX4/120 motherboard being around $200, 16MB of RAM for about $500, and a 16 port BocaBoard for about $250, you can make a really reasonable terminal server quite easily. I prefer the FreeBSD solution because it plays seamlessly with the rest of my operations, I always have spare parts around in case of emergencies, I like being able to do IP firewalling and arbitrary routing without headaches, and all the other nifty stuff FreeBSD allows you to do.. ... Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Greco - Systems Administrator jgreco@ns.sol.net Solaria Public Access UNIX - Milwaukee, WI 414/342-4847
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