From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Nov 10 19:42:44 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-26-235-186.mmcable.com [65.26.235.186]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 3B3E037B479 for ; Fri, 10 Nov 2000 19:42:41 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 55155 invoked by uid 100); 11 Nov 2000 03:42:35 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14860.49195.162544.563119@guru.mired.org> Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 21:42:35 -0600 (CST) To: Roop Nanuwa Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD GW vs. Router In-Reply-To: <36613335@toto.iv> X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 (patch 10) "Capitol Reef" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Roop Nanuwa types: > Hi.. me again =) > Our company wants to switch from a FreeBSD gateway on a T1 > (supplying internal IPs & internet access to internal boxes) to a LinkSys > Cable/DSL type router. Has anyone ever used these routers? Are they > better/worse/same as having a FreeBSD GW? I've got a LinkSys Cable/DSL Router. If you've got a collection of non-servers you want to cram behind a single IP address, it does an excellent job of being a plug-n-play solution. For the most part, they did things right - configuration via HTTP, it has *nothing* listening on the internet side, etc. I just wish I could disable NAT completely, but that's quirk of what I want to do. Overall, I'm happy with it and don't have any problem recommending it for people who need such a thing. It's different from a FreeBSD box. If you get the 100BaseT router version, it's one less box to deal with, and a lot smaller than anything you're likely to install as a FreeBSD gateay. It's a lot less expensive than a FreeBSD box and a 100BaseT router. A FreeBSD box could be configured to do the same job, plus some things it won't do. FreeBSD also means you have source, which always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. The real question is - why the change? This thing isn't doing anything the FreeBSD box can't do, so there's no reason to change. If they're trying to cut maintenance costs, or free up rack space, or upgrade something, that might make sense. Otherwise, there's no reason to make this replacement.