[geeks] NAT and Filtering on Solaris

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

Hello, everyone,

     I've been off dialup since the 20th and am now on Earthlink's
cable-Internet service.  So far, I like what I see, except that the packet
latency makes things like ssh really feel like I'm ISDN instead of
something with much higher throughput.

     While I was on dialup, I went from having non static IP (in '98) to
having a static /28 block (in '99) to having a single static IP (in
February).  Through all this, I've been using a crappy old PC running
Linux as my router/NAT-box.

     Said PC does not have enough slots and resources to support a second
ethernet card -and- do the voicemail projects I'm playing with.  As a
result, my Octane is the only system at home with 'net access.

     I recently found out that IPFilter runs on Solaris.  How well does it
work?  What sort of differences can I expect when moving from the Linux
world of "easy setup, crap performance"?

     I'm really excited about getting a full-time job for that nice U10
I've got, but I don't want to bother if it's going to be a PITA about
having the external interface lacking a static IP or if the performance is
going to be lackluster.

     I've never looked at IPFilter, but I'm guessing from it's BSD
heritage that it's got more features than I could ever use.  That being
said, I still should ask if it either supports NAT, or if there is some
complement to it that implements NAT.

--Jonathan