Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 11:22:06 +1000 From: "Doug Young" <dougy@gargoyle.apana.org.au> To: "Bryan Otteson" <ares@ida.net>, <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Re using a 486 Message-ID: <046301bfca9e$a3ba1cb0$847e03cb@ROADRUNNER> References: <Pine.BSF.4.05.10005302318250.3382-100000@moritz.alleswirdgelber> <002701bfcaa4$2da68bc0$9ab58dd0@arescomputer>
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> I know I sound like a retard, but I've only been trying to mess around with > a unix-style machine for a couple of weeks now, so humor me. > > What's a "gateway" computer, or setup, or whatever? > The term "gateway" in this context is synonomous with "router" as far as I can gather. Basically people who have a LAN connected to the internet find it beneficial to have a machine dedicated to running the connection. All the setups I'm working with have plenty of public range IP addresses, so there isn't a need to mess around with network address translation etc. The actual "gateway" machine doesn't need to be particularly powerful ..... even a 386 will work fine because apart from forwarding the odd packet here & there its not doing anything much. For what its worth, the last time I asked I was told even the horribly expensive Cisco router thingies only have 386 CPU's. This sort of thing is FreeBSD's forte .... its at least as stable as the commercial unixes & if all its gonna do is sit in a corner someplace and more often than not never get looked at then the price is right :) For workstation use I prefer commercial unixes like SCO & Solaris which come with "proper" window managers, unlike the awfully tacky & buggy KDE / Gnome disaster cases. There are a bunch of alternative ones that the more experienced users around here recommend. I've never bothered since the mailing list archives suggest there are countless problems with FreeBSD window managers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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