From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Nov 19 14:50:17 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id OAA12410 for questions-outgoing; Tue, 19 Nov 1996 14:50:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from vdp01.vailsystems.com (root@vdp01.vailsystems.com [207.152.98.18]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id OAA12405 for ; Tue, 19 Nov 1996 14:50:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from crocodile.vale.com (crocodile [204.117.217.147]) by vdp01.vailsystems.com (8.8.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id QAA15017; Tue, 19 Nov 1996 16:50:05 -0600 (CST) Received: from jaguar (jaguar.vale.com [204.117.217.146]) by crocodile.vale.com (8.8.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id QAA08426; Tue, 19 Nov 1996 16:50:04 -0600 (CST) Message-ID: <3292399D.DC6@vailsys.com> Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 16:50:05 -0600 From: Hal Snyder Reply-To: hal@vailsys.com Organization: Vail Systems, Inc. X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Randy DuCharme CC: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD as dedicated router References: <199611192201.QAA06012@atlantis.nconnect.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Randy DuCharme wrote: > I have to provide a low-cost, high-performance routing solution. I'm > wondering how FBSD would work in this scenario. I've never tried to do > this with FBSD and don't have too much time for experimentation in this > case. Has anyone done this??? Here's > the scenario..... The scenario you describe should be quite amenable to FreeBSD as a router. We run several FreeBSD systems here doing local routing. I like the SMC PCI combo boards that have two ether ports on one card. FreeBSD just stays up 24x7, no annoying crashes like NT. A big win with FreeBSD is you can use tcpdump to sniff problems on the LAN, fire up a real live DNS server whenever you want, use that idle CD-ROM drive in the FreeBSD box as a Samba share and put e.g., the MS TechNet CD in to try to chase down those NT crash bugs, turn on ipfw and log funny packets, etc. The list goes on and on. Like 20 x the functionality of a proprietary router. At Siemens, we used a lowly 486SX-50 or so with FreeBSD to route between segments. It was more than up to the task, with about 30 hosts locally going through the FreeBSD router to the WAN. Do it!