Mike,<br><br>Have you looked at Vyatta? I haven't installed it yet, and it may be overkill for what you are talking about, but BJ(?) gave a talk about it at Wolf's install fest before last and it looked pretty cool.<br>
<br>GC<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 6:29 PM, Michael B. Trausch <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mike@trausch.us">mike@trausch.us</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
On Thu, 2010-07-08 at 14:31 -0400, Scott Castaline wrote:<br>
> That's pretty much where I'm going on this matter. The feedback from<br>
> this thread is making me remember other things happening that I sort<br>
> of ignored that had increased in frequency in recent times. When I add<br>
> them up it makes more sense to me. Time to upgrade. Anyone know who<br>
> makes the ASUS routers? I've seen one that was recommended on the<br>
> DD-WRT forum (or there about) and it looks like I think Trendnet, not<br>
> sure.<br>
<br>
All I can say for sure is that I rather like Linksys^WCisco<br>
consumer-class hardware, when I have to use an appliance for routing at<br>
all. I will still defer advanced functionality to a "real" computer<br>
elsewhere on the network... which usually means that I disable DHCP on<br>
whatever router I have and have my server do DHCP and serve the custom<br>
parameters that I want for my network.<br>
<br>
That said, I have been thinking a lot lately. A lot of the work that I<br>
do is the same stuff over and over again---setting up domains with email<br>
and NAT routing and DHCP and all that jazz. Sometimes there is one of<br>
these consumer class NAT routers on the network, and sometimes I roll my<br>
own and firewall it with iptables and manage it on a dedicated or<br>
semi-dedicated system, depending on hardware availability and so forth.<br>
And I'll note that this line of thinking is perhaps dangerous for me,<br>
because I make my livelihood doing the "same shit, different day" song<br>
and dance, but...<br>
<br>
I have been thinking that there needs to be a distribution that<br>
abstracts this whole process a bit. Geared towards (very) small<br>
businesses, like home businesses and offices < 20 people, where there is<br>
a program that will handle the configuration of the network interfaces<br>
and provide for things like failing over from one Internet connection to<br>
another when the primary route falls asleep, file and printer sharing,<br>
network setup and management (think DHCP, radvd, DNS, tftp and other<br>
things that are commonly used to do semicomplicated things on small<br>
networks, all more or less automagically handled). Perhaps I'm<br>
dreaming, or maybe it's the heat and dehydration getting to me and doing<br>
the talking, but I think that something that did that and did it such<br>
that a semi-technical person (I think they're called "power users" in<br>
the Windows world) would be able to set it up and run with it and just<br>
call a tech when something breaks...<br>
<br>
--- Mike<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div><br>