Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 22:00:31 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Andrew Hesford" <ajh3@chmod.ath.cx>, "John Telford" <j.telford@sympatico.ca> Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: What name brand would you buy for a firewall/router ? Message-ID: <006e01c0b1cc$3c563020$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20010319233801.A95896@cec.wustl.edu>
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I've actually found that 486/33's and 486/25's are quite satisfactory at acting as simple Ethernet-to-Ethernet routers. In fact, at my home here I have a 386/25 EISA box with 2 SMC8013 ethernet cards in it and I can pass 3.5Mbt through this for hours without trouble. This is with a 10BaseT nic in a Celeron that can run the Ethernet at 9Mbt if no other devices are talking. The great thing about the 486's is that the CPU's don't have to be fan-cooled so there's one more failure point gone, and they use less power, generate less heat, and as a result last a lot longer. The downside is finding 500Mbt disk drives for them. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com >-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Andrew Hesford >Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 9:38 PM >To: John Telford >Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: Re: What name brand would you buy for a firewall/router ? > > >If you want a box to push packets, go to a flea market or your favorite >source for old hardware, and buy an old Dell Dimension P100. If you >like, you can substitute the words "Dell Dimension P100" with the >name of your (boss's) choice. > >I won't buy a Celeron on principle. A PIII is overkill extraordinaire if >you're just jockeying packets. Get something in the 100-200 MHz range, >which should go for less than $200 today. > >Naturally you will want PCI slots, since all the good NICs are PCI >cards. > >I've got a diskless, videoless Dimension XPS P90c that runs PicoBSD. It >does NAT, port forwarding, and packet filtering. I couldn't be happier. >Cheap, quiet, easy. And I don't feel like I'm wasting a good processor, >since I can't think of a better use for a 90 MHz Pentium. > >On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 12:31:37AM -0500, John Telford wrote: >> If the boss said "stop using those old cast offs for FreeBSD >> firewalls/routers and buy a name brand" >> What's out there right now that would be worth looking at and avoiding. >> Dell, IBM, Compaq ? Processor Celeron, PIII, AMD ? >> Thanks in advance, John. >> >> >> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org >> with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message >-- >Andrew Hesford >ajh3@chmod.ath.cx > >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
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