FreeBSD Gateway

[Nikolas Britton]

Victor Foulk wrote:

>Hello all,
>
>I have been looking into setting up a network gateway
>using a FreeBSD box, so that I may employ many of the
>network security features of the system (and to 
>overcome the fact that the current network is
>insecurely connected to a much larger ~public LAN).
>
>The configuration would be much like this:
>{Internet}--{Huge/NastyLAN}--{FreeBSDGate}--{SafeLAN}
>
>Most of what I see states that I should use 
>a *minimum* of:
>
>266Mhz processor
>64MB RAM
>1GB HD (actually ~2GB based on number 
>        desired security apps)
>2 Compatible NIC's
>  
>
The "minimum" is what you can get FreeBSD to run on, If you can can get 
FreeBSD working on a 386 then that is the minimum but for practicality a 
486 is the absolute minimum. As far as the minimun amount of disk space 
is conserned the same thing as above goes, here is a FreeBSD router 
project that works on as little as 5MB: http://www.m0n0.ch/wall/ . Same 
thing goes for RAM and obviously you need to have at least two Network 
Interface Cards unless you wanted to route all traffic to /dev/null.

>What I really had hoped to find, was more of an experienced
>networking guru's thumb rule equating the number of safeLAN
>workstations with the required gateway RAM/Processor; to 
>enable all safeLAN users to experience a minimal network
>transaction time roughly equivalent to what they would see
>if plugged directly into a really good hub.
>Something maybe in the form of:
>Proc Speed = X*Users+Y
>RAM = W*Users+Z
>  
>
You would plug them into a switch not a hub.... if you did that then the 
router would be the least of your problems as the bottleneck is the hub now.