[H-GEN] Recommendations on routers / modems

[Russell Stuart]

On Sat, 2006-08-12 at 14:20 +1000, David Ash wrote:
> 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.

They have a grand total of 2 Windows PC's, with ancillary
printers and what not.  Ie, tiny.

On Sat, 2006-08-12 at 18:51 +1000, David de Groot wrote: 
> You didn't mention what the upstream link was. Presumably ADSL, but  
> there could be any number of different types of connections that a  
> hotel would use.

Its currently an ADSL link.

On Sat, 2006-08-12 at 19:54 +1000, Willie Yeo wrote: 
> I think that a hardware solution is probably better off.
> 
> I use a lot of Cisco routers in my line of work, and they do 
> the jobs well, as long as you know what you are doing.
> 
> Otherwise, pick up something along the lines of a Sonic 
> Watchguard (or such).

I agree.  In these one-off situations a hardware solution
is easiest to setup and maintain.

Thanks for all the responses.  I have evidently left out
a few important details.  One was the size - its tiny.
The other is a workable setup.  A simple arrangement
would be:

             |
         +--------+
         | Modem  |
         +--------+
             |
         +-----------------+  +--------------------+
         | DMS Router      |  | Hotel Network      |
         | NAT,DHCP Server |--| NAT,DHCP-Server    |
         | DNS-Relay,QoS   |  | DNS-Relay,Firewall |
         +-----------------+  +--------------------+
             |
         +-----------------+  +-----------------+
         | Guest Network   |--| Wireless 802.11 |
         | NAT,DHCP-Server |  +-----------------+
         | DNS-Relay       |
         +-----------------+

One device would probably perform the functions of several 
boxes above.  In words:

  - There are two networks - the one guests use and the one
    the hotel runs their machines on.  These networks share
    the one internet link.

  - The hotel network must be completely isolated from the
    guests.

  - The hotel must get a guaranteed portion of the
    internet bandwidth, so they can get to the yellow
    pages and what not even if the guests are thrashing
    the network.

What the hotel currently has a some D-Link boxes.  There
is nothing wrong with how that are connected or configured.
If the D-Link boxes reliably did what they say they do in
their manuals what they have now would be fine.

It is easy enough look through a catalogue and choose a
different set of boxes that will do the same job.  But
in my experience is these cheap boxes misbehave if you 
do anything beyond what your average home user would do.
That is why I gave up using them to do those more 
complex functions years ago, and as a consequence now 
have no idea what products actually work.

Trying to find out what products actually work was the
real point of this email.