Linux Router ...

[james@jamesmcdonald.id.au]

> Anyone got any experience setting up a PC with Linux and using
> it as a router?
>
> Pos's  or Con's ? cost benfits versus something like a Crisco 26xx/28xx
> series ?
>
> Thx's ...

I have been using a Linux box (which is an old beige box with about 128MB
RAM) as the router firewall for our external interface.

Currently it's running:
Squid as a transparent proxy
Apache as a reverse proxy back to a (sorry for swearing) Exchange 2003
Server with OWA access.
It also port forwards PPTP VPN Traffic back to a internal server.
And an openvpn tunnel to another site

I run an ADSL modem in bridge mode and the pppoe connection is configured
to be always up.

For firewalling I use www.fwbuilder.org which has a nice graphical
interface and version control. You put the firewall script on the box
somewhere like /etc/firewall/<hostname>.fw and then configure it to be
triggered by /etc/ppp/ifup.local

With this software it's relatively easy to configure NAT, Port Forwarding,
and a transparent proxying.

I tried IPCop but soon found I was hacking config files which breaks the
web admin console