Date: Sat, 9 Dec 1995 11:19:17 -0800 (PST) From: Tom Samplonius <tom@uniserve.com> To: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com> Cc: "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net>, sreid@edmbbs.iceonline.com, freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Hardware for ISP / WWW server Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.951209111123.17129D-100000@haven.uniserve.com> In-Reply-To: <199512091758.LAA22167@brasil.moneng.mei.com>
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On Sat, 9 Dec 1995, Joe Greco wrote: > > > 28.8 kbps modems for dial-up > > > > Run dialup from a terminal server. A Livingston portmaster is a great > > box and has a very hackable security server. (Um... no, rather its easy > > to modify to suit your needs) > > Ewww, no way. > > A Livingston Portmaster has some pretty gnarly drawbacks: > > 1) has problems with subnets None, that I've seen. And I run quite a few sub-nets from various Portmasters. In fact, my house is connected by one. > 2) requires you to waste IP addresses due to the way the thing reserves > addresses for dropped connections Huh? You need 30 addresses for 30 ports. There was a reported bug, that said that the unit would sometimes use 31 or 32. But still hardly a waste. > 3) in the case of dropped connections totally bungles the way its handled I haven't seen this either. > 4) isn't really all that flexible Not especially. But what it does, it does well. > 5) etc (my mind can't think this morning) > > I deal with sites that use FreeBSD as terminal servers and sites that use > Portmasters as terminal servers. Invariably the sites with Portmasters have > all sorts of bizarro hacks in place to try to get around various problems > and limitations that these stupid devices seem to cause and/or impose. > > If you want a "real" terminal server, buy an Annex. A Portmaster can run all ports with PPP at 115,200 baud continous. Try that on an Annex. > If you want a more flexible solution than either of these two, go get a > dedicated FreeBSD box. With the price of a 486DX4/120 motherboard being > around $200, 16MB of RAM for about $500, and a 16 port BocaBoard for about > $250, you can make a really reasonable terminal server quite easily. The problem is, is that PC serial hardware will never give you performance of a terminal server. Tom
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