FC4 as business-class router

Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
Tue Jan 17 21:18:00 UTC 2006


On Tue, 2006-01-17 at 13:10, Aaron O'Hara wrote:

> After looking that the prices for these appliances, I was wondering if a
> PC-based router running FC4 (or similar, like CentOS) would be just as
> good/better/worse than the appliance?

If your internet handoff is a single ethernet, you can probably save
money with a PC based system.  If you need traditional T1/serial
connections or complicated fail over routing, go with dedicated
hardware.

> My fear with a PC based router is that there are more chances for
> hardware failure given the increased number of parts.  Do people on this
> list have experience running PC-based routers serving 100-200 users for
> shared Internet and VPN?

A dedicated router without a hard drive is slightly less likely to
fail.  Either way you need a plan for quick recovery.  It's cheaper
to stock a spare PC but slower to re-install from scratch, so
plan ahead.  You'll want a tftp server with a copy of the current
config for a router, perhaps an already installed disk for a PC.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com





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