Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 02:17:31 -0700 (PDT) From: Mark Jayson Alvarez <jay2xra@yahoo.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Can FreeBSD withstand this kind of network load?? Message-ID: <20050421091731.10656.qmail@web51601.mail.yahoo.com>
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Hi, Someone consulted me about building a pc router for multiple networks using a single interface card. Actually there are two, one facing a network going to the internet, and the other facing those multiple networks. The setup looks like this. There are three /24 networks, A, B, C All of these networks are private lan. However, Network A contains their servers, one of which is their internet proxy server. That proxy server is dual homed, one private, one public, which is also their passage way to the Internet. Now, the IT guy asked me if he can use a pc router so that network B and C can see network A, and make their way to the internet through the proxy server sitting on network A. I told him yes. I'm thinking of three posibilities, bridging, ip forwarding, and NAT. In his sketch, PC router has 3 interfaces, 1 facing network A, and two each facing network B and C. With this setup, since A already have a route to the Internet, we don't have to use NAT, ip forwarding will do the job. We will simply forward the request coming from each interface connected to network B and C to the interface connected to network A and then they can already see the proxy. However, he told me that network B and C in his sketch is not really their set up. It could extend to even few more networks(D, E, F, G, H). Qestion: Instead of using 6 to 8 interface cards in his pc router,(which I don't think is a good idea) can we just alias that interface, let's say it has an ip for networks B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I and then all the traffic from B-I network will pass through this interface through some sort of cascading switches and then routed will forward this to the second interface facing the A network and then every body will be happy? Or is it not feasible considering that all the traffic from 6-8 networks will only pass through a single interface considering that each network will at least have 30-50 hosts? What's even funny about this is that he brought that pc he will turn into a router in our office so that we can install freebsd-4.11 with this specs: pentium III - 500 Mhz memory 64 MB. HD 4 GB I just don't know whats wrong with his hard drive, FreeBSD panics during the installation process. I just smiled thinking, "whoa!, you're building a pc router that will route hundreds of host with this specs??" I haven't really encountered this kind of setup yet, that's why I told him I will do a research on this setup. I've heard that freebsd can be configured as a web server with this specs serving hundreds of clients with just few tweekings.. What do you think with his scenario? Thanks a lot!!.:) You're the best! __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site! http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/
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