[NTLUG:Discuss] linux router recommadation

[Ralph Green]

On Tue, 2009-03-03 at 20:50 +0000, m m wrote:
> All:
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> I have a extra box and I like to use it as a router.
> 
>  
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> 1. Any one recommand a good one?
> 

> 
> 2. How ipcop can detect the dynamic IP?
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>  
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> I have tried the ipcop. It is never able to dect my TimeWanner cable's dynamic IP.
> 
> my seting on ipcop is green+red, green is ok, red is never able to get IP from cable modem.
> 
> Do I need manu assign for it?

Howdy,
  I have run ipcop and its predecessor for years.  I strongly recommend
them.  I have used it where the WAN IP address came by DHCP and it
worked fine for me.  My current setup is PPPoE on the WAN side, but I
have set it up for multiple people where it was DHCP.  None were Time
Warner, so there may be something odd about their DHCP.  I have a
dynamic DHCP name, so I wanted the router to know when the IP address
changed.  It worked fine.  I did not do manual address assignment.
  I am replacing the hardware for my IPCOP box.  As David Stanaway says,
a full PC takes a lot more power than a little router box.  There are
thin clients and small firewalls you can flash with IPCOP that get you
the power savings while running full strength software.  I'll either use
a Nokia IP130 or a Neoware CA2 thin client.  A full PC is also noisy
compared to these little boxes and that is what is driving me.
  The  other project that I have tried and is interesting to me is named
pfSense.  It has a smaller brother named monowall, which I am currently
running as a test.  The low power device I had to begin with is a
Soekris 4521 box with 64 meg of ram and that is not enough ram for
pfSense or IPCOP, so I went with monowall.   pfSense has a nice feature
set, but it is BSD based instead of Linux.  That may matter to you,
since this is the Linux Users Group.
  And I really want to try Vyatta.  It is reported do be extremely
similar to a high end Cisco box.  I would hope to learn how it works and
then be more able to help people with Cisco routers.  Maybe that is
optimistic, but comments are welcome. 
Good luck,
Ralph