On Wed, 2006-12-20 at 10:37 -0700, Dazed_75 wrote:
> WOW, thanks for all the input. Frankly most of the replies violate
> the first criteria since most seem to require an always on computer
> system (and while a router such as a Linksys WRT54 really is a
> computer, I do not count it for that criteria). And the only solution
> I still see is the one of using a router with dnsmasq. For example by
> using open-wrt on any of the supported routers such as the wrt54gl
> (not the model I currently have).
>
> I am not sure Craigs message denigrating "appliance" devices applies
> to something like open-wrt but I also do not know what djb is and a
> web search was not revealing. I do know that dnsmasq allows you to
> choose lease duration, and my linksys router does retain leases at
> least for their duration.
>
> FYI, machines on my network run Ubuntu 6.06, 6.10, kubuntu 6.06,
> Windows XP, 98SE, and sometimes Win ME, win2k, Mepis, SUSE 10.1,
> puppy, knoppix, DSL, LFS, even tried Mandrake and gentoo. I have not
> run RedHat in years but have run 4, 5, 6, 8, and even 9. Never ran
> Fedora. I probably add and remove an average of two machines per
> week. LOW maintenance is critical. I think a solutuion for me would
> also work for TONS of people with simpler needs and for members of
> SLUG. That is why I would prefer the whole enchilada be in an
> off-the-shelf router. I just have not found one with it built in.
----
It's not that I wish to denigrate anything - a simple cable/dsl router
is only going to provide the minimum level of services since one of the
primary objectives is low cost. I think that they get this done in 32
megabytes of RAM and in virtually 'read only mode'. They simply don't
provide DNS but at best proxy DNS requests. Yes, my commentary applied
to open-wrt package as well since it too must live within the same
constraints.
dnsmasq as I understand it...
http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html
doesn't do much anything different so you can't expect it to provide
local dns resolution either.
My preference is for a router to be nothing more than a router/firewall
and not provide network services such as those discussed above or any
others and thus, some of the appliances are more than suitable for that
and of course, ipcop operates on hardware with 64 MB if not less.
I think it's imperative for any network to have a server that provides
infrastructure...file storage, user authentication, host name
resolution, etc. This means that if I want to blow away my desktop
system and do a clean install of some other OS, I can simply do that
since my home folder, my files, my e-mail, etc. all reside on a server
that is safe and generally backed up regularly.
Craig
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