[NCLUG] Network configuration

Sean Reifschneider jafo at tummy.com
Thu Oct 26 18:24:22 MDT 2000


On Thu, Oct 26, 2000 at 02:28:07AM +0000, dobbster wrote:
>2. I think my DSL line is something like 768K/256K download/upload. 

RADSL isn't that asymetric until you get to 4mbps.  if you got 254kbps
service, it's around 480/320kbps.  If you got 768k service (costs
around $100 per month) you get around 900/820kbps.

I currently have a P100 running as a firewall on my 768K DSL at home
and it works fine.

>Will having a P-75 as my firewall system slow down my network?  Can

It will probably add some latency, but it should be able to stream
your full bandwidth through it...

>these older systems handle other services such as DNS and NIS without
>bogging things down?

NFS is pretty light-weight.  I've run a web server on a 486 SX-40
which actually serves up pages pretty fast.  20MB of RAM really helps
there...

>3. Regrettably, I've never configured a firewall before...  I was
>planning to use the guidelines from O'Reilly's "Linux Network Admin
>Guide" and the HOWTOs...  Will this suffice?

Maybe.  Probably not...  Firewalls are subtle and quick to anger.  You'll
probably also want to look at some of the firewall scripts out there and
see what sorts of rules they set up, and compare them to the rules you
have set up that don't work...  Don't forget tcpdump, it can really help.
("Hey, I see my ping packets going out on the public net, but they have
the wrong source IP address." -- that sort of thing).

Sean
-- 
 If we don't survive, we don't do anything else.
                 -- John Sinclair
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python



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