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@xxxxxxxxx
