[geeks] fwd: The Seven Phases of Owning an iPod: UI

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 @ 02:04 -0500, Sridhar Ayengar said:

> Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> > Yeah, it helps to know what to look for.
> > 
> > I need something physicall small and inexpensive, and mostly for routing
> > among private LANs. The LANs have their own gateways, so the router
> > won't need to do WAN connections itself.
> > 
> > I used to have a couple of routers years ago, but quit using them
> > because they were so big.
> 
> Why not do it all in one unit?  How many private LANs and WAN 
> connections are we talking about?

Currently it looks like this:


      WAN (modem link)
            ^
			|
			|
	+--------------+
	| SS5, NetBSD  |
	+--------------+
	        |
			|
  ---+------+---+---------+-------+------------------ <-- 192.168.1/255
     |          |         |       |
	 |          |         |       |
	 |          |         |       +--- Sun server
     |          |         +--- Sun server
	 |          +--- Sun server
	 +--- PC Desktop
	          |
			  |
			  v
		wireless card
		      -
			  -
			  -
			  -
   neighbors wireless NAT box
              |
			  |
			  |
  ------------+--------------------------------------- <-- 192.168.100/255


So, my WAN link is a modem connection via PPP to my ISP. The SS5 is a
mail, news, DNS, gateway host for my private LAN. It's routing tables
send that traffic to my ISP's servers.

The SS5 routes all other traffic back through my PC, so all the "fast"
stuff goes out over a shared broadband WAN connection.

Obviously this is not desirable. The desktop shouldn't be providing
any kind of service like that. It gets rebooted, experimented on, and
wireless cards suck anyway.

Since I don't have a dedicated gateway machine, I rather have a black
box do the networking job than to continue using the NetBSD machine.

The SS5 is due to be replaced anyway, and gaining more freedom in server
configuration would be a bonus.

Plus, I get to learn at a least a little about routers. I have not used
them extensively in years now, and even a little bit of practice would
be helpful.

This is in competition with other projects like a backup server, and a
replacement for my desktop, so I can't spend much money on it.

Is that clear, or did I just stir up the mud?

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny." --
Unknown]