[H-GEN] Recommendations on routers / modems

David Ash dash at redhat.com
Sat Aug 12 00:20:04 EDT 2006


Russell Stuart wrote:
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> 
> I am currently at a company conference.  Apart from 
> attending, my job is to provide Internet connectivity.  
> Normally, it ain't that difficult.  I just bring 
> along a Linux box that acts as a gateway to hide
> whatever is behind it.
> 
> This time I had no end of trouble.  I traced the
> problem down to bugs in the routers and modems they
> were using.  The bugs caused DNS to fail completely
> or to resolve to 1.0.0.0.  Eventually I bypassed all
> their DMZ's and firewall's, using the Linux box to
> perform those functions, and the conference was
> happy.  This was fine for me, but from the hotels
> point of view totally unacceptable as I had access
> to their internal network.
> 
> I explained this to them, and they ask me to fix it.
> I can't.  My problem is that I gave up using hardware
> based firewalls years ago for precisely this reason -
> I have been bitten by too many bugs.  Now I just buy
> the dumbest modem I can buy, put it into whatever
> bridging mode applies and do all the routing from
> a Linux box.
> 
> This option is not really applicable to the hotel.
> They use Windows, and I am not about put in a Linux
> box that I have to maintain.  So I (or rather the
> hotel) needs a router that provides NAT, DNS relay,
> DHCP server, a firewall and perhaps QoS (flow control)
> that works.  Seems like such a simple thing.  Any
> recommendations?  Price isn't a huge issue.

I do a lot of your requirements above with a cheap $100 netgear adsl 
modem which I plug into another switch.  Can't say it's ultra reliable 
though but don't have much network communication problems.  Just maybe 
have to reboot once every year or so.

How big does it have to be?  For reliability, I have never seen a hp 
switch die.  But have seen one with an old firware have to reboot.

In my last job I worked a lot with HP switches which were cheap for 
their mid to high end gear (compared to cisco).  This is an example of one:
http://www.hp.com/rnd/products/switches/switch5300xlseries/features.htm
It does:
-routing
-port based stuff
-qos
and a lot more (maybe too much for your requirements but i don't 
know)... not sure about dns relay or nat though...

Regards
Dash




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