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Date:      Sat, 9 Dec 1995 15:08:03 -0600 (CST)
From:      "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net>
To:        Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com>
Cc:        sreid@edmbbs.iceonline.com, freebsd-isp@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Hardware for ISP / WWW server
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.91.951209150248.23784A-100000@sasami>
In-Reply-To: <199512091758.LAA22167@brasil.moneng.mei.com>

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On Sat, 9 Dec 1995, Joe Greco wrote:
> > to modify to suit your needs)
> Ewww, no way.

:)

> A Livingston Portmaster has some pretty gnarly drawbacks:
> 
> 1) has problems with subnets

True.  OSPF Real Soon Now(tm).  (And I'm not routing networks with it.  yet)B

> 2) requires you to waste IP addresses due to the way the thing reserves
>    addresses for dropped connectionso

Not if you modify radius to assign the SAME IP for each port. (S1 has .1,
S2 has .2 etc...)B

> 3) in the case of dropped connections totally bungles the way its handled

I don't understand this.

> 4) isn't really all that flexible

Yes, its rather stupid.  (This is good though.)

> 5) etc  (my mind can't think this morning)

Busted!

> 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.

Well there is that.

> If you want a "real" terminal server, buy an Annex.

Oh.  And get a non rs232 compliant serial port? :)
(I didn't even say this.)

> 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.

True, but the Portmaster just sits and works.  My problem right now is
crappy modems.  I'm going to fix that pretty soon.

> I prefer the FreeBSD solution because it plays seamlessly with the rest of
> my operations, I always have spare parts around in case of emergencies, I
> like being able to do IP firewalling and arbitrary routing without
> headaches, and all the other nifty stuff FreeBSD allows you to do..

True.  A Unix based TS box has its advantages.  I just don't want to have
to hack that much to get it integrated with my setup.  I'm having enough
trouble making myself write a detail file processor. :)  Maybe when
I have slept more.

| Matthew N. Dodd   | winter@jurai.net    | http://www.jurai.net/~winter    |
| Technical Manager | mdodd@intersurf.net | http://www.intersurf.net        |
| InterSurf Online  | "Welcome to the net Sir, would you like a handbasket?"|




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