Re: OT: routers


Subject: Re: OT: routers
From: Mike Tibor (tibor@lib.uaa.alaska.edu)
Date: Tue Mar 04 2003 - 20:57:36 AKST


On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, James Dory wrote:

>
> I know this isn't on topic but wondering if I could tap some knowledge
> from the sysadmins... email off list if appropriate.
>
> I have a network with about 30 total potential users scattered about.
> about 10 or 12 users centrally located, then others scattered about
> town. They will be connecting into the central location via mostly
> pairgain modems/leased lines from the teleco. These are ethernet
> connections from pairgain to lan switch or router.

With so few users and the comparatively large number of separate sites
you'll have, you'll be spending a small fortune on Cisco gear. My
suggestion would be that you consider deploying Linux based routers. If
you go with a router-oriented distro on a CDR and build the systems
without hard drives, for all practical purposes you'll have the same
reliability as a Cisco router. For the number of users you're talking
about, any recent x86 hardware could forward far more packets per second
between interfaces than you'll probably ever need. The bandwidth of your
leased line or pairgain WAN links is going to be your bottleneck anyway.
Hopefully Christpher Browne will pitch in here--he's forgotten more about
routing with Linux and x86 hardware than I'll ever know.

The downsides that I can think of with the Linux router scenario would be
increased complexity, possibly a greater learning curve, and "uniqueness"
(if you leave that company, the chances that your replacement will be
familiar with Linux based routers are much smaller than the chances he/she
would be familiar with Cisco routers).

As far as whether to route between sites--you definitely want to route.
 That way you won't have broadcast traffic going over your WAN links,
among other things.

Just my $0.02...
Mike

-- 
Mike Tibor         Univ. of Alaska Anchorage    (907) 786-1001 voice
Network Technician     Consortium Library         (907) 786-6050 fax
tibor@lib.uaa.alaska.edu       http://www.lib.uaa.alaska.edu/~tibor/
http://www.lib.uaa.alaska.edu/~tibor/pgpkey  for PGP public key

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