From owner-freebsd-isp Wed Jul 9 19:07:41 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id TAA29326 for isp-outgoing; Wed, 9 Jul 1997 19:07:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.webspan.net (root@mail.webspan.net [206.154.70.7]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id TAA29321 for ; Wed, 9 Jul 1997 19:07:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from orion.webspan.net (orion.webspan.net [206.154.70.5]) by mail.webspan.net (WEBSPAN/970608) with ESMTP id WAA10697; Wed, 9 Jul 1997 22:07:31 -0400 (EDT) Received: from orion.webspan.net (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by orion.webspan.net (WEBSPAN/970608) with ESMTP id WAA25666; Wed, 9 Jul 1997 22:07:30 -0400 (EDT) To: Cliff Addy cc: Nate Williams , isp@FreeBSD.ORG From: "Gary Palmer" Subject: Re: T1 upgrade options? In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 09 Jul 1997 15:52:02 EDT." Date: Wed, 09 Jul 1997 22:07:30 -0400 Message-ID: <25664.868500450@orion.webspan.net> Sender: owner-isp@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Cliff Addy wrote in message ID : > On Wed, 9 Jul 1997, Nate Williams wrote: > > > small office (like mine), a dedicated PC works *much* better than a > > CISCO ever would, and total costs (including hardware, maintenance, > > etc..) are significantly lower. > > I don't buy this at all. A Cisco 2501 is only ~$1700 and requires *zero* > maintenance once it's set up. For a typical setup, that takes about 10 > minutes. If you build a machine yourself, using reliable, quality parts, > you're lucky if you save $500 under that. And then you're worrying about > hard drive crashes, config changes, OS security holes, etc. I have to agree The network I presently run has 10 ciscos of varying types (mostly 2501s) in it. I have seen *ONE* of them crash once in the past year. And it recovered immediately and our network paging software didn't even have time to notice anythink amiss (it only checks every 5 minutes). For a RELIABLE connection, nothing can beat a Cisco ... no hard drive to worry about, no filesystems to worry about failing a fsck on reboot, and pretty amazing stability under direct attacks. If you want reliability, go with a machine that is designed to run 24/7, not a machine that was originally designed to run Windows 9 to 5. Gary -- Gary Palmer FreeBSD Core Team Member FreeBSD: Turning PC's into workstations. See http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/ for info