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Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2001 12:57:54 +1000
From: David Jericho <davidj at diskpig.org>
To: general at lists.humbug.org.au
Subject: Re: [H-GEN] Cisco SOHO 77 ADSL Router
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On Sat, Oct 27, 2001 at 10:07:58AM +1000, Frank Brand wrote:
> Well, you obviously feel a need for a Cisco so I would not try telling you
> otherwise. Cisco stuff is usually viewed Rolls-Royce type. To paraphrase the
> old adage, its like IBM, Oracle and Microsoft stuff...nobody ever got fired
> for buying Cisco.

Cisco stuff is expensive, even if you bribe the sales rep with lots of 
beer and a free night with Robbie Williams/Kylie Minogue/Cute-person-of-choice.
Unless you have a particular need for a Cisco feature, or a Cisco product, I'd
look around at other brands such as Netgear or Alcatel, or even a homebrew 
solution.

> <SNIP>
> CISCO 827 Set-Up Special
> If you choose one of our ADSL plans and your business requires a router or a
> router upgrade we can help by providing a configured * CISCO router that
> doubles as a DSL modem for only $1400 including GST.
> </SNIP>

>From the ExpressData webpage (www.expressdata.com.au), a plain 827 is $1,921. A
SOHO 77 is $1,893. Of course these are price lists, and you'll rarely pay that,
but unless you have a particular need for a Cisco router, I'd just buy a PC.

If noise is an issue, here goes an experiment. 

Intel P4 @ 1.5GHz			$365
Custom heatsink for P4 w/o fan		$50
GigaByte GA-8IDML-C Intel 845 MB 	$239
512MB of PC133 SDRAM			$119
NETGEAR 4 port 10BaseT hub		$79
D-Link 530tx 10/100 PCI NIC		$49
Generic ATX case w/300w PS		$69

So far completely silent, and only 	$970

We obviously need something to boot off, you have
the choice of:

Generic 65x IDE CDROM			$65
Floppy 1.44MB 3 1/2"  			$30
Advantech 16MB IDE Flash SSD		$128


So all up, we're bumping in at $1100 for the expensive flash disk option. P4 
processors have auto heat protection, so it'll clock down from 1.5GHz to whatever
lets it remain inside its operating temp. There are dozens of distributions that
have nice pretty clicky tools for configuration, that boot off floppy or CDROM.
512MB will let you create ramdisks as well, for squid proxies or whatever. You
could quite easily kill the fan in the power supply, and with a little work,
modify the case and power supply to have air grills ontop and allow free airflow. 
Intel boards have native support of a serial console.

For a couple of hundred extra, you can whack a cheap video card in, and a 40GB drive
and make a home file server/gateway/do-everything-for-you-box.

Of course, if you're looking for Cisco IOS experience, low end Cisco routers (at least
I recall), don't feature a full IOS image. I'd investigate the various Cisco IOS 
simulators such as Krang.

--
David Jericho

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