Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 13:12:28 +0100 From: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com> To: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, "Bara Zani" <bara_zani@yahoo.com>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: DSL PPPoE with 2 NICs Message-ID: <000a01c16e97$fa4e3130$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <002501c16e7e$27a453e0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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Ted writes: > Wrong. Generally, businesses seldom make decisions > on what is the "better idea". Generally, businesses > make decisions based on that is the "cheaper idea" > There's a big difference. There isn't any difference, as you yourself proceed to explain. > There are certainly more times that it's cheaper > for a business to buy a hardware router than using > a PC with 2 NICS. Yes. > But this is because businesses have to make tradeoffs > all the time, and a very common tradeoff is giving > up functionality for a cheaper cost. Giving up functionality you don't need is irrelevant; and if you need it, you cannot give it up. The business requirement is to solve the problem, not to please the geeks. > If the functionality that is given up is not essential > to the operation of the business then most businesses > have a fudiciary duty to their stockholders to go with > the cheaper solution that has less features. In other words, the cheaper idea is the better idea, in contrast to what you initially asserted. > However, this kind of short term thinking sometimes > will turn around and bite the business on the butt > and cost it more in the long run, because they > have to scrap the solution they bought 6 months > ago and replace it with a more expensive solution > that has the features that they suddenly found out > they needed to have. No. The cost of a $100 router will be amortized in far less than six months. It is cheaper to buy the router while it meets requirements, then remove it if necessary and replace it with a more elaborate solution later, than it is to go with the elaborate, expensive solution on the off chance that the functionality it provides will be useful at some point in the indeterminate future. Here again, it's a matter of doing what makes economic sense, as opposed to pleasing the geeks. > As most people these days seem too lazy to want to do > that, they are not going to like my statement, but > instead they will prefer yours because they want to > believe that the world's problems can all be solved in > 60-second sound bites. Most businesses don't have emotional attachments to their network architectures, and they'll prefer my statement just because it gets to the point and solves the problem, rather than wax philosophical in an attempt to conceal a religious preference for a specific configuration. > You need to explore other editors under FreeBSD, > most of them are much easier to use than vi. What do you recommend? I want something that works just like Notepad. > Wrong again. The reason the security people are > concerned about using UNIX, or Windows, or any general > purpose computer operating system as a router is > not because of potential holes. It's because IF > the router is compromised, you can do a lot more > damage to the rest of the network from it than from a > dumb hardware router. They are concerned because UNIX is not a router, and makes a poor substitute for one where there is a choice. It's rather like writing a C++ program to change the contents of a specific text file, instead of just calling the file up in an editor and changing it directly. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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