Need Advice on Routers

Matthew A Coulliette matthewlug at cox.net
Wed Apr 29 00:01:46 MST 2009


Mark,

He is a glitch that I had while building my Smoothwall router.  I was
originally going to use an old IBM 1.9 Ghz machine with 3 pci slots.  I
also decided to setup a 4 zone router: 3 pci slots and onboard
ethernet.  The problem was not the speed of the machine. It was that the
bottom pci slot was only limited functionality.  It took me a whole
saturday to trouble shoot and properly diagnosis this problem.  That is
why I am putting together another computer out of my spare parts. I
needed more pci slots with full functionality.

MatthewMPP


Mark Phillips wrote:
> Thanks for the suggestions. Newegg advertised that all the NICS I
> mentioned are Linux 2.4/2.6 compatible.....for what that is worth! ;-)
> I will look into chip sets as well. Both machines have run Debian
> before....the PIII is a Windows box....it would be more fun to format
> the drive and install Linux....one less Windows installation in the
> world....;-)
>  
> Now to find the time to do all of this......
>  
> The PII (and PIII) are both headless now. Is there a way to install
> IPcop or smoothwall over a network without a keyboard or monitor
> attached to the target machine?
>  
> Mark
>
> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 10:56 AM, Eric Shubert <ejs at shubes.net
> <mailto:ejs at shubes.net>> wrote:
>
>     I'd use the PII as well. You might need a little more ram if you're
>     going to run snort or dan's guardian. Otherwise, it'd be fine.
>
>     I've used many TrendNet gigabit cards, all worked fine. Most (if not
>     all) gigabit cards I've seen use the RTL8169 chip, which most linuxes
>     (and IPCop) support. I expect smoothwall would too.
>
>     Mark Phillips wrote:
>     > Thank-you all for your suggestions. I am intrigued with IPcop or
>     > smoothwall on an old PC.
>     >
>     > As it happens, I have an old PIII and PII that I could use. The
>     PIII is
>     > a Dell Dimension XPS T500 with an 800 MHz CPU 512 MB RAM, and
>     the PII is
>     > a Dell Dimension XPS H266 128 MB and 266Mhz CPU. Which one
>     should I use
>     > as a router?
>     >
>     > I looked on Newegg,and found these NICS - anyone have any experience
>     > with them?
>     >
>     > Rosewill RC-400 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI V2.2, 32/64-bit, 33/66MHz
>     > Networking LAN Card With Heatsink & 4 LED indicators - on sale
>     $14.99
>     >
>     > TRENDnet TEG-PCITXR 10/ 100/ 1000/ 2000Mbps PCI Copper Gigabit
>     Network
>     > Adapter - $11.99
>     >
>     > HAWKING HGA32T 10/ 20/ 100/ 200/ 1000/ 2000Mbps PCI Gigabit Ethernet
>     > Adapter - Retail $16.99
>     >
>     > Rosewill RC-411 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express Network Adapter -
>     Retail
>     > on sale $14.99
>     > Thanks!
>     > Mark
>     >
>     > On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 9:00 PM, Matthew A Coulliette
>     > <matthewlug at cox.net <mailto:matthewlug at cox.net>
>     <mailto:matthewlug at cox.net <mailto:matthewlug at cox.net>>> wrote:
>     >
>     >     I am currently building a smoothwall router out of an old
>     pc. Smoothwall
>     >     is a great piece of software.  I have 8 computers so turning
>     an old one
>     >     into a router didn't bother me. It has a web interface for
>     >     administration, and can be set up with up to 4 zones: red -
>     www, orange
>     >     - DMZ (web server), purple - wireless, and green - LAN. For
>     most people
>     >     I would say that this option is more hassle than it's worth,
>     but for
>     >     myself it is just what I was looking for. - MatthewMPP
>     >
>     >
>     >     Technomage wrote:
>     >      > Alex,
>     >      > yes, you can (U have done so in real time here). Also,
>     you can
>     >     isolate
>     >      > that firewall bridge from every other VM on the
>     >      > host without much difficulty (thus preventing one of the
>     >     scenarios that
>     >      > would develop should you misconfigure the
>     >      > internal bridge).
>     >      >
>     >      > also, to put this in some perspective, me and a friend
>     were doing
>     >     this
>     >      > level of Virtual Machine work long before
>     >      > any of the white papers were ever written. He's the one that
>     >     clued me in
>     >      > to how this was done and we both ended up
>     >      > doing a live running test under vmware server for Linux
>     at the time.
>     >      >
>     >      >
>     >      > Alex Dean wrote:
>     >      >
>     >      >> On Apr 27, 2009, at 1:24 PM, Eric Shubert wrote:
>     >      >>
>     >      >>
>     >      >>> Mark,
>     >      >>>
>     >      >>> I have a couple old e-machines that I made into IPCop
>     >     firewall/routers,
>     >      >>> and have been decommissioned for a while (they were
>     virtualized).
>     >      >>>
>     >      >> Do you mean you virtualized your firewall?  Doesn't that
>     create
>     >     a risk
>     >      >> that other VMs on the same hardware host might be
>     exposed to nasty
>     >      >> stuff which arrives at the firewall?  I'm recalling
>     Austin's talk on
>     >      >> VMs & security from a year or two ago.
>     >      >>
>     >      >> If I've misunderstood your statement, please disregard.
>     >      >>
>     >      >> alex
>     >      >>
>     >      >
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