Dialup Firewall/router

[Jonathan Hutchins]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: JD Runyan [mailto:Jason.Runyan at nitckc.usda.gov]

> I recommend having mail and squid on the box, so that the traffic over the
dial-up
> line would be reduced to a minimum.  Squid would cache files, and the
> mail server would collect the mail, so that 5 or more users 
> aren't each checking every 1-10 minutes.  

It's my personal and not-very-well informed opinion that unless the users
have remarkably similar browsing habits, squid does nothing for a small
network like a home or small office.  Remember that browsers usually cache
pretty well too, so squid for one or two users doesn't make sense.  I have
no idea at what point squid really starts to pay off, but I'm skeptical.

On the other hand, with a large, National Health Care company where staff
accesses sites like WebMD and HCIS all day, a web cache makes sense and pays
off.

As far as running fetchmail goes, the traffic is nearly the same whether the
client fetches the mail or the server does, and checks when no mail is
retrieved aren't really a significant load on the bandwidth (we're assuming
all POP here).  For reasons of my own, I run a mail server inside the
firewall and the firewall runs fetchmail to retrieve mail to it, but it's
not for efficiency.

I think that if you have enough users that you have to worry about caching
web pages or minimizing no-result mail checks, a dial-up connection is going
to be so inadequate that it won't matter, but that's just my opinion.  

My suggestions are also biased toward using a minimal machine, preferably
obsoleted from some other task, for the firewall.  If the oldest,
least-otherwise-desirable system you have available is a dual-900MHZ Athalon
system with two gigabytes of RAM some of my concerns become irrelevant
<grin>.