New wireless router - D-Link DGL-4300 owners chime in, please!

[StarTraveller]

Originally Posted by TSgtJoe2005

http://www.tomsnetworking.com/lans_r...html?chart=119

Great linkage!

I actually wrote the author of the MIMO wireless router shootout article asking him about throughput numbers. He never wrote me back, but this is all the reply I need, hehe.

[StarTraveller]

Originally Posted by shaihulud

Support has been included in FreeBSD since 5.1. Since kernel 2.4.x support has been included. Is this in a RAID configuration or single drive BBS (BIOS Boot Selection).

The thing is that I have a boatload of old and small (5 GB), but identical drives and I'm thinking about putting them to use in a RAID10. It's still just something spinning around inside my head - not sure what I'll end up doing.

Maybe I can elaborate a bit more on the incentives behind my ideas for the setup.

My buddy's web server needs to be behind some sort of firewall. That box (Windows 2003 Server and IIS/Exchange) only runs ftp, http, mail and remote desktop services. Very few ports need to be opened to this box. It's living happily behind my 3Com router presently, but I want to move it to the basement and use the 3Com router at my parents' place. It's been compromised before (it was used as a spam host) so I really want that box to be locked away as much as possible.

As a side note about the line to the basement. I've layed out one category 5E unshielded cable from the living room / kitchen to the basement. I had to make a hole for it as parts of it had to go outside, which is why there can only be that one cable.

Also, I want as little stuff as possible in the kitchen. Partly because of the potential noise, but mostly because of the greasy stuff that tends to attach itself to everything in the kitchen. Unfortunately, the kitchen is the point of connection for the WAN so I can't avoid it completely.

My file server is not exactly quiet so I want that out of my living room as well. It's a Windows XP box, but I've been thinking about moving to Windows 2003 Server. I've also considered Linux for it, but the thing is that I'm very familiar with Windows and that makes Windows a better choice for me until I become sufficiently proficient with Linux. It currently hosts ftp, http and Windows shares, but I would like to host my own mail server also in the not to distant future.

TBH, I would feel really good about having the ftp, http and mail hosted on a Linux box. I'm already running Apache for the web server and I'm not really liking the ftp server I'm currently using so nothing really ties me to Windows in that respect. The only thing that does is my lack of knowledge about setting up an adequately secure Linux (or BSD, for that matter) box. I'm hoping that something like fpSense is going to help me out. Would it be madness to run ftp, http and mail on the gateway itself?

There's that P2-333 that doesn't necessarily have a purpose. That could also find itself in the service as a host for the ftp, http and mail...

Furthermore, I've been thinking about virtual pc's, e.g. running those services on the file server, but inside virtual Linux boxes using something like VMware Player. I suspect that the 512 MB RAM (CUSL2 maxed out) in my file server will be a bit low for that purpose, though.

So many possibilities and so many choices that must be made - and I'm really bad at making up my mind in situations like this, hehe.


PS: Sorry about just pouring out my thoughts like that, but there are so many angles that it's becoming a bit difficult to get them all organized...

[shaihulud]

The thing is that I have a boatload of old and small (5 GB), but identical drives and I'm thinking about putting them to use in a RAID10. It's still just something spinning around inside my head - not sure what I'll end up doing.

What is nice about the firewall distros of UNIX and Linux is that a very small hard drive is required. Matter of fact it is unnecessary to even have a drive. Many of these can boot into operating mode just from the CD-ROM or a floppy. A small hard drive, such as the 5GB ones you have, are perfect for something like Monowall or pfSense. I would not use them in a RAID configuration, I would only use them for saving configurations and logs.

There are many firewalls out there. Clark Connect has some very useful features, but it is at cost. I would try the free route first. Get your feet wet for this is half the fun. This will also be some of the best experience you can get.

As a side note about the line to the basement. I've layed out one category 5E unshielded cable from the living room / kitchen to the basement. I had to make a hole for it as parts of it had to go outside, which is why there can only be that one cable.

You used UTP for this!?! I figured this one layer 1 going to basement to be true, and therefore advised the use of a switch to “expand” your connections. This will give you more hosting connections in the basement. You will still need one fanless switch in the kitchen.

TBH, I would feel really good about having the ftp, http and mail hosted on a Linux box. I'm already running Apache for the web server and I'm not really liking the ftp server I'm currently using so nothing really ties me to Windows in that respect. The only thing that does is my lack of knowledge about setting up an adequately secure Linux (or BSD, for that matter) box. I'm hoping that something like fpSense is going to help me out. Would it be madness to run ftp, http and mail on the gateway itself?

Not really madness. Trick is usually to segregate the points of contention logically and physically. If your hits are high with HTTP, and you need some none private FTP usage, you can have some bandwidth issues. However with traffic shaping you can control the queues and bandwidth, but you will still be limited to the ultimate amount of bandwidth allocated to that connection the hosted services are on. Just work your way up from the hard drive, to the core logic, processor, memory, out the NIC, into the network, and out to the cloud.

If you are ever curious there are many sites out there informing on the very How-To's. Not many are good, and a lot are out of date, but one great thing about *nix that there is some relative and good information out there if you look.

It is good to brain storm. Do it some more.

[StarTraveller]

The ftp and http are fairly light when it comes to traffic. I host a few web sites (my personal web site and one for the karate club I'm a member of), but nothing major and most of the time I use ftp and web for sharing of the odd file here and there (typically screenshots and stuff like that). The idea was that the RAID10 would be suitable for hosting the data for web sites. I even have plenty of drives to keep some for cold spares.

Also, my thinking is that if anything heavy is getting pulled off of the ftp then it goes through the gateway anyway so the traffic should be about the same. E.g. if someone pulls 100 Mbit off of the file server then the gateway is gonna have its hands full also. Can the fpSense distribution mount Windows shares? The handling of that could be determining for where the services should run...

And yeah, I only had a UTP 5E cable handy when I drew the cable to the basement. I don't think it'll be an issue, though. It's just a few metres along the wall down to the basement and the path is well shielded from the weather in general.

[SRTDodge05]

I just got the DGL-4100 and i noticed that my WAN speed went down from my old wrt54g router.

[Gorganzola]

Is QoS turned on?