FYI: microkernel router experience

["Doug Simmons" <dsimmons@lib.siu.edu>]

Thought I would relate my experience lately with building a full-time home
router, in case anyone was considering the same. The idea, of course, is
that you get a free, quiet, high-availability router serving DHCP and
on-demand dialup or ISDN/DSL routing (and optional firewall functions) that
even a chimp can configure. Well, that's what they brag about in the flyers,
anyway... :)

First, I built a diskless 486 with ISA USR 33.6 and 3c509 cards.

Tried Coyote Linux:
	Has errors in coyote.conf and S76makepppdconf - results in faulty
ISP.ppp and pppd.conf files that you have to correct manually, and which
will only "take" upon reboot if you know beforehand about the "backup" admin
function which enables writing changes to the real filesystem on the floppy.
I didn't know about that at the time, and finally gave up. All config for
Coyote is command-line, which is fine, except that you have to really hunt
to find all the conf files. I never did get Coyote to even dial out. There's
good info in their forums, but not in their docs.

Tried BBIagent:
	Worked, with minimal config. Their version of rawrite sucks, don't
bother downloading it. Their web admin interface is Java driven, and kinda
kludgy, but it has some nice features like a cool live traffic graph. Their
FAQ has a little good info, but it's not exactly "comprehensive".
Unfortunately, you have to reconfigure pppd every time you reboot, because
they want 36$ to give you the "save config" function...

Tried Smoothwall:
	Worked out of the box. Requires a small HD, is 20MB to download, and
you have to put a cdrom in the box long enough to do the install unless you
really, really, want to do a network install. I slapped a 500MB drive in the
486 because that's what I had. Runs well, has a quick web interface switch
for "enable on demand dialing" that prevents spurious dialing while I'm out
of the house and don't want realplayer or whatever trying to go get updates.
It's not as elegant as the one-floppy distros, but it's truly FREE and it's
working very nicely.

FWIW,

Doug Simmons
Microcomputer Systems Specialist II
Instructional Support Services
Morris Library
Southern Illinois University Carbondale 



-
To unsubscribe, send email to majordomo@silug.org with
"unsubscribe silug-discuss" in the body.