Date: Thu, 02 Jan 1997 13:38:51 -0600 From: Hal Snyder <hal@vailsys.com> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: FreeBSD/ET, T1 router Message-ID: <32CC0ECB.70C@vailsys.com>
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I wonder if anyone else has results using FreeBSD on a WAN router. This message is more of a progress report than a question... A couple months ago, we needed another ether interface on one of our WAN routers. We had been using a Cisco 2501, which has only one ether interface and is not upgradable. I persuaded my employer to let us try out an Emerging Technologies HDLC card in a PC running FreeBSD. There was some grumbling from the Cisco loyalists - who ever got fired for buying Cisco? We took advantage of slow work schedules and net traffic over the holidays to make the switch. The FreeBSD/ET-based router runs 2.1.5-R and the latest driver bits from the ET ftp site. It talks Cisco encapsulated HDLC over a T1 to a genuine Cisco router at the other end. It took about 3 hours to setup and configure FreeBSD on the PC, and another 2 hours to link in the ET driver bits and set things up. We were able to use all factory settings on the ET-5025-16 card, and used the default setup file provided by ET for Cisco HDLC, without modification. ET docs are lucid and thorough. We can add more ether slots on the system cheaply whenever we want, just by adding another SMC dual-port card. The ET card we bought also has a second async port available for Frame Relay or point-to-point. It is a big win having FreeBSD admin tools on the router. Ipfw allows us whatever level of logging detail we want on filtered packets. We linked an operations kernel without bpf, and a diagnostic one with bpf. The latter allows us to run tcpdump on the WAN interface as well as on ether.
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