Palm Router

[Leo J Mauler]

On Mon, 1 Mar 2004 12:40:00 -0600 Jonathan Hutchins
<hutchins at tarcanfel.org> writes:
> On Monday March 1 2004 10:18 am, Brian Kelsay wrote:
>
> > So my solution is (cost of old hardware+$0 for
> > distro+few hours of  setting it up=very tweakable
> > Linux Router)
>
> True, and for any of us who know (or want to learn)
> linux and have the old P120 or better, it's great.

Speaking as one of the few people who still bitches on
comp.os.linux.advocacy that Linux has turned into an OS for higher-end
computers (Debian may still work but I've never gotten it installed, and
while I like Slackware no one creates packages or binaries for it),
FreeSCO and related solutions are still *great* for extremely low-end
machines.  486 systems can handle the load of a home router, and a lot of
$12 (or less) 486 motherboards come with the PCI slots necessary to run
100Mbps Ethernet cards.  If you don't need higher than 10Mbps, a 386 can
handle the load on a 10Mbps network (I haven't personally found an ISA,
or even a VL, network card faster than 10Mbps).

In fact, my first router was a 486DX2-66 with 16MB RAM and three PCI
slots. Eight systems over a 100Mbps home network, and the router never
crashed.

> I used to build these for people, but I can't recommend
> it any more.  For around $50 you can get a black box
> that doesn't make any fan or HD noise, requires no
> keboard, mouse, or monitor, takes up as much space
> as a paperback book, and can be managed successfully
> by a non-technical person.

Other than the space issue (put two "S" Encyclopedia volumes long end to
long end) and the fan noise (no hard drive to make noise), the rest is
true of FreeSCO and similar floppy-based solutions.

The FreeSCO install is entirely on floppy and accesses the floppy only
occasionally.  If noise is a big factor then get a quiet power supply
(and used power supplies can frequently still be quiet) and mount the
floppy *inside* the case.

> I've never used one of the pre-packaged Linux firewalls,
> nor have I ever had the spare capacity to install any GUI
> or web-based interface, which might make a Linux firewall
> more managable to a non-technical person,

FreeSCO comes with a built-in web-based interface (they even mention it
on the homepage, www.freesco.org), just point your browser to the gateway
address (like you do with any black box solution), port 82.  FreeSCO even
allows a tiny web server (over and above the web-based interface) to be
run out of the floppy-based distro, still without a hard drive (though
you might want one for an intranet).

The only difficult part is the initial setup, but for those who think
this is a stumbling block, a phrase: "pre-installed Windows OS" comes to
mind.  If you pre-install FreeSCO for the home user, they can use the
web-based interface from then onwards.

> but I still suspect that for anyone but the Linux computer
> hobbiest the "brick" solution is the best.

Probably, though my FreeSCO router ran the home network without any real
need for maintenance, like the PalmRouter and related "black box"
solutions.  Any maintenance I needed was done with the web-based
interface.