RE: 486/66 as a Firewall

[Timothy Lillicrap <ik0873 kingston net>]

I have a 486DX 66mhz which I am thinking of using as a firewall/gateway in a
similar manor.  Unfortunately I live in the country and have to use a dialup
connection.  At the moment I have a pentium 200 mhz which is serving as the
firewall/gateway, but I would like to use it for something else as it seems a
waste to use just for the gateway.

I understand that there will always be some sort of overhead when using a
firewall.  My question is - will I notice a difference if I switch from a
pentium 200 to a 486 66 as my gateway.  I thought that because I am on dialup
that I may not even notice the difference due to the fact that so little
throughput is happening (4-5K a second).

Could anyone tell me if I should expect to see a difference????

thanks 

Timothy Lillicrap


> 
> It is this rewriting of headers that consumes CPU time and actually
> slows the system. While I get 1.1MB down with my DSL when a machine is
> directly connected to the DSL modem, I find there is roughly a 20% lug
> on speed when going through the 486SX firewall. Speed drops to 850 to
> 900MB down behind the Linux firewall.
> 
> Eventually I plan to upgrade to a Pentium firewall as the prices for
> the 90MZ to 166MZ machines drops to near zero. PCI NIC's should also
> help. However, there is always going to be overhead when running a
> firewall. Protection does not come with zero cost.
> 
> 
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