Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 3 Oct 2002 18:27:38 +0100
From:      Richard Jones <freebsd-questions@jonze.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: advise on gateway-setup
Message-ID:  <20021003182738.A35863@daedalus.info-plc.com>
In-Reply-To: <20021003104748.GA99335@deter.dk>; from vchit-list@deter.dk on Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 12:47:48PM %2B0200
References:  <20021002160429.GC96783@deter.dk> <3D9BEDAF.6080606@401.cx> <20021003104748.GA99335@deter.dk>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 12:47:48PM +0200, Morten Grunnet Buhl wrote:
> Thanks everyone.
> To summon what I have been told. I need a fair amount of RAM, medium CPU, reliable
> disk (RAID of some sort), and cooling - you can never get enough.
> This pretty much what I expected - but I must admit its nice to hear
> some production-case-stories.

Hmmm, I'm not too sure what you're trying to deploy here. I would start
by saying that a router/firewall traditionally has very low requirements
compared with other computing tasks (gaming, development). 

In our office here, rather than buy a dedicated firewall router, I built
a Linux and then FreeBSD machine for a firewall. It's a P100 with 48M
RAM and a 1Gb HDD. It's load average rises slightly above zero when I
log in and otherwise not at all. It services about 30 people with a 1Mb
link, and mixed 10Mb, 100Mb internal service subnets.

If *all* you are doing is routing and firewalling, then you will not
need so much RAM, the processor speed will depend to some degree the
complexities of your firewall/NAT tables, and the speed of your network
connections. Bear in mind though, before you starting splashing out on
processors, that your PCI bus is limited in its bandwidth (33Mhz?). 

For resilience, I would recommend mirrored drives, but they need be no
larger than your install - 1GB should do as you won't need source, X
etc. They don't need to be fast either, once the firewall's up and
running everything will sit in memory.

> doing a fiber solution. So if anybody has some fiber specific

Now this could make a big difference. Running several Gb NIC cards might
start to test your PCI bus and possibly processor.

Regards,

Richard
-- 
Richard Jones
http://www.jonze.net

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20021003182738.A35863>