From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Mar 21 0:37:40 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from chmod.ath.cx (CC2-1242.charter-stl.com [24.217.116.226]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 36E4537B71C for ; Wed, 21 Mar 2001 00:37:36 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from ajh3@chmod.ath.cx) Received: by chmod.ath.cx (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 4E0ADA90B; Wed, 21 Mar 2001 02:37:08 -0600 (CST) Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 02:37:08 -0600 From: Andrew Hesford To: Ted Mittelstaedt Cc: Andrew Hesford , John Telford , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: What name brand would you buy for a firewall/router ? Message-ID: <20010321023708.A4459@cec.wustl.edu> References: <20010319233801.A95896@cec.wustl.edu> <006e01c0b1cc$3c563020$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <006e01c0b1cc$3c563020$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>; from tedm@toybox.placo.com on Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 10:00:31PM -0800 X-Loop: Andrew Hesford Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Yes, I imagine a 486 would do just fine. The trouble is, the only spare 486 I have lying around requires ISA network cards, which I don't have, and don't care to buy. With PCI cards, I can always pull them later and plug them into modern machines. But my desktop doesn't even have an ISA slot. About fans: maybe it's taboo, but I run my P90 with no fan, and I've never had trouble. It's been up for months on end, and always remains cool to the touch. I guess if I'm wrong, and someday it melts, I've just blown $100 worth of computer, but hell, I'm willing to take that risk. The only fan in my router is the power supply fan. On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 10:00:31PM -0800, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > 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 -- Andrew Hesford ajh3@chmod.ath.cx To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message