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FREESCO could possibly pre date the patent dates and it does meet the basic criteria. It is also still in production and still running on a floppy.

Well, depends on what your "useland root" is for. I've used this perfectly functional distro booting from a floppy for a long time. You can even squeeze in an extra app or two on the floppy or all fo the extras on a sub-Gb HD. http://www.freesco.org/

Well, it may be a bit ghetto, but you could take a look at FreeSCO and assorted add-ons.
I used it as a firewall/router for a small network (6 users using p2p, ftp, ssh, web etc, the whole shebang) on a pentium 75 with 16MB memory for quite some time and never had any issues with it.

FreeSCO: http://www.freesco.org/
FreeSCO add-ons: http://www.freescosoft.org/

Not rely on software firewalls?

I've run Freesco and later MonoWall firewalls on mostly-free hardware (Asus P255T2P4/128MB/P233 with super-glued passive heatsink) almost 24/7 since 1999. Neither have been difficult to set up, and Freesco is very noob-friendly. Freesco needs minimal resources and will even run on a 486.
Both have performed with boring, appliance-like reliability. I run from a Compact Flash card in an IDE adapter instead of a hard disk. Those parts are dirt cheap nowadays.

http://www.freesco.org/

http://m0n0.ch/wall/index.php

http://pigtail.net/LRP/printsrv/ Get ideinfo.exe from here to check CF card parameters.

http://www.pfsense.com/ I haven't tried this yet, but it's a popular fork of MonoWall so I'm mentioning it to save someone else the trouble. :)

I've been using http://www.freesco.org/ many years ago.

It ran from a 1.44MB disk on a computer with as little as 4 (or was it 8?) MB RAM and worked for years.

Try a package called Coyote Linux or FreeSCO. I ran both on a ludicrously underpowered p3 with 64mb ram and just a floppy (and later an old 1.2gb hard disk). I recall SAMBA support in at least one of them ... but I admit it's been a little while and that's about all the information I've retained. I use a d-link wireless router and no NAS server these days.

Rather than throw old PCs into the trash and fueling the waste problem find new uses for them.

For example, old PCs 386 or later, can be reused as a router/firewall. They provide excellent security for your home LAN while keeping it out of the waste pile. Being floppy based, Freesco does NOT require a hard disk! Install the software and reuse the PC or give it to someone who will. See:

http://www.freesco.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FREESCO/

Later PCs, such Pentium 400 MHz or later, can be reused as MythTV PVRs by adding an inexpensive TV tuner ($20-$30) I have gotten PCs as old as P2 266MHz 128 MB to have some limited PVR functionality. (contact me if interested in old PC PVRs)

http://amicus.sourceforge.net/

Practically any PC, 386 or better, can run lightweight Linux distributions such as DSL or Debian for general purpose computing.

http://damnsmalllinux.org/
http://debian.org/

These are just three low cost methods I have personally used to recycle old computers. Use your imagination and Google, and you can see there are many other options too. Don't throw it away, make the old PC into something useful reuse it or give it to someone who will!

Andrew Lynch

Well, this is a router that runs on custom hardware; not a city in Texas. (Yes, or a nickname for a certain city in the Bay Area...)

But yes, FREESCO is "A small free firewall router intended as a replacement for more costly commercial products." And, if you are wondering... "The name stands for FREE ciSCO". They have a website, and a very helpful group of friendly support forum [not located in NJ, I might add].

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with FREESCO, but my router does run their software on a very old PC. Does the job very nicely, too.

No need for a CD

I used FREESCO, a microlinux distro on a floppy for a long time on a PII as a router/firewall - http://www.freesco.org/

"...a free replacement for commercial routers supporting up to 10 ethernet/arcnet/token_ring/arlan network cards and up to 10 modems."

Unlike the LRP, FREESCO is still under (very) active development and has been stable for long time. Tons of add-inns if you want.

Nice (text-based) Web control panel too.

I'm using something called FREESCO (http://www.freesco.org/)
It's linux with a firewall and many other features that runs off a floppy. I cobbled together some old parts to make a system to run it on and it works very well. Configuring the firewall is a command-line pain, but otherwise it's good. The support in their forums is excellent.

The trick is to use a dial on demand linux box.

Smoothwall or Freesco if you want a pre packaged solution for that setup (both do much more as well). I used Freesco running from floppy on a 486 with 12MB ram when I had dialup and it worked fine.

Getting off topic here but anyway..
I am using Smoothwall at home now on a P200/128Mb with 3 nics and fully optioned (DHCP/Snort/Squid/DDNS/DMZ etc) and it is running great. It seems every single home router I've tried has some very annoying issues or some bug somewhere in one form or another and I finally got frustrated and built the Smoothwall box. One model home router would not work with the PS2 headset regardless of DMZ status or ports forwarded and would randomly drop computers off the local network, one model would slow to a crawl when passing pop email and would stay at crawl speed until rebooted, one model would choke with heavy multiple connections (bittorrent, some games, and usenet) and would not recover, it also took up to 20 minutes with multiple reboots for it to get a DHCP address from Comcast. The list goes on and on. I understand these are home routers but you'd think they would at least work. Funny how I rarely see firmware updates for them either. I have not tried any of the Linksys models but Dlink, Netgear, SMC, and ATT have failed me.

Get FreeSCO (http://www.freesco.org/) and download FAQs and stuff. Even the "cheap" training places don't offer their product for free, and you can at least nail the concepts down with books and Internet-provided information. I work for a $4 billion pharmaceutical and am allowed exactly one training course per year.

No OS is ever fully patched, you must mean patched against the well-known vulnerabilities.


But let's compare...

Windows: Create network connection, File sharing and administrative shares shared by default.

OSS (In most cases): Create network connection, services YOU chose to install are listening.


While IE/Outlook are to blame for a lot of garbage getting in, Windows opens itself up to all sorts of stuff by default. Maybe this is much better with XP-SP2, I don't use XP so I don't know.

Anyone connecting ANY desktop (securing your servers is another topic), be it Windows, Linux, BSD, etc.. directly to the internet via high-speed line is crazy. Use NAT at the very least! FREESCO fits on a floppy, runs on 486's with 8MB of ram, you have no excuse.

This looks an aweful lot like something I have been using for almost 2 years now, Freesco. This is a floppy based router i'm sure all you /.'ers already know about.

As long as you have a floppy or CD-ROM drive on the laptop, you can create a bootable FreeSCO disk that will turn your laptop into a fully functional and highly configurable router. You don't even have to configure anything on the laptop itself because all the work is done on the computer where you make your bootable disks.

Purchased

Free

Secure


Any combination of the above three.

Seeing as how they were funded by intel and all, it's probably expected that XORP will be fairly popular. I do think that running older hardware as a router is a good idea - I have a pentium P-54C 150MHz that i use as a router (running Freesco) when my main (Windows...i know....it's humiiliating) computer with ICS goes down. I have never worked with a proper hardware router (just a teenager), but a box running off of a floppy disk/cd/small hard drive is very good as a router, and is very configurable.

get a 486/66, slap in 2 Nics, d/l freesco and install it. Search the forums for bandwidth limiting.

The biggest issue I have had with freesco was a) bad floppies and b) finding supported nics. 3Com 3C509s and 3C905s both work great. On the ISA ones make sure you turn off PnP.

I've used this product for over 2 years without an issue. I'd reboot it once a month just because, but I can't think of a time I had to.

Good Luck
Vertical

get a 486/66, slap in 2 Nics, d/l freesco and install it. Search the forums for bandwidth limiting.

The biggest issue I have had with freesco was a) bad floppies and b) finding supported nics. 3Com 3C509s and 3C905s both work great. On the ISA ones make sure you turn off PnP.

I've used this product for over 2 years without an issue. I'd reboot it once a month just because, but I can't think of a time I had to.

Good Luck
Vertical

Personally the 'always on' aspect is more important to me than speed (which is fortunate, as I have no broadband options). I rely on the internet connection constantly for news, weather, yellow pages, recipes, etc. My solution is an old 486 running Freesco that keeps my dialup link live 24/7.

Aside from the periodic nasty email from my ISP ("Your dialup connection is not meant to be an always on...blah, blah"), it works fine for me.

Roll your own box with Freesco. The base install has telnet and a web control panel but you can install the SSH package and be happy.

You place a firewall between your network, and the internet (possibly inline with your cable modem/main network), which you then set to reject anything you havn't specifically allowed through into you network.

This will then block any packets on ports other than the ones you've opened from getting through to your network. If you want an easy way of doing this, give FreeSCO a try.

FreeSCO (Free ciSCO .. not free SCO...) I didn't need any of my Linux experience to get a firewall/router up and running in about 30 minutes.

I did use a lot of my experience with Linux when I got it installed onto hard drive, and turned my Tandy Sensation I into the web server and email server for my domain, though.

I was looking for a used SOHO series router on eBay, but I think I'm better off building a small Linux router and using something like Freesco instead.

I know I'm small potatoes in context to the article, but I wonder how many other large organizations, after having a experience simimlar to Mr. Tague's, will take a long hard look at a Linux based solution?

At home I have an SMC Barricade SMC7004VBR and a Siemens SpeedStream SS-2604 (Not a bad deal for $25 and includes a printer port). I have also worked with a few of the Linksys and Dlink models.

Making a port forward to another machine with them is often impossible.

I have not found this to be the case. Every one I have ever used has offered configurable port forwarding, port forwarding with a trigger port option and a blanket DMZ forward all rule (ouch).

A true firewall includes things like proxy services, if only to make sure your LAN isn't going to open your network up to the world, not to mention the possible performance improvements with caching.

I agree with you that home routers do not have these abilities, but I have never expected such devices to be able to do that, specially since they cost less then $35. I use my Linux machines behind the router for those functions. Why would you want your router to do those functions anyway? The less it runs the easier it is for you to keep secure.

Why people think a $100 or even a $200 router from a retail outlet is capable of being a bastion for security I'll never know.

Again these devices cost less then $35USD, not 100 or 200. They are much better then hooking up a pc directly to the wire and way more secure then an unpatched/uncared for Windows or Linux machines running the show.

They do have easy to use setup screens and do offer quite a bit of filtering, VPN, rulesets, and forwarding options but each has something the other does not. My main issue I have with these home routers is I have not seen one that defaults to deny and I have not found one that can block outgoing requests to specific ip addresses. That is why I still keep my floppy based Freesco router that runs on my old DX2/66 around, plus I can dial in on it.

Add to that: http://www.freesco.org/

It's the nicest single-floppy system I've used, but I had to move on to bigger and better, because single-floppy systems just don't have the advanced features that are necessary just about everywhere now.

1). tomsrtbt Linux on a floppy - essential!
2). Windows 98SE boot floppy
3). Knoppix 3.2 bottable Linux on a CD.
4). Memtest86 bootable CD for testing RAM - excellent!
5). DOS freeware F-Prot and recent virus definitions
6). Norton's DOS utilities
7). Various HD setup utilities (eg: Western Digital, Seagate boot floppies)
8). Freesco Linux router/webserver on a floppy
9). Sample linux config files (eg: XFConfig-4, fstab, etc)
10). Frozen-Bubble bootable CD for times of stress

Also try these:

FreeSCO - great for routers

tomsrtbt

DemoLinux

RIP Linux Rescue System

SuperRescue CD

Morphix

For Windows software, take a look here

I use FreeSCO as a floppy based router/masq machine. Quickest setup ever!

I thought it was Freesco the whole time I was reading the blurb. I kept asking myself, what's with this Berlin name? Then I clicked thru and realized it wasn't...Oh well. I like Freesco better anyways. =)

yes, especially since the name is so similar to Freesco.

1) If you want the best performace with linux, you will propably have to re-compile everything. You can do all this by hand by following the procedures giving by the Linux from Scratch projet. If this is too much for you, you can go with source-type distributions.

2) If you don't want to go down the "compile-for-3-days" path, you can try modern distros of linux or BSD: FreeBSD, NetBSD or OpenBSD (there is a debian "port" of netbsd and one of freebsd that *could* make life easier). Most are compiled for i386 and can be used if you...

3) Carefully choose your applications! Don't use Kde or Gnome unless it has been carefully stripped of all the surplus. Don't use Mozilla, try pheonix instead.

4) Try it! The best way to know if this is better than that is to try it out.

If it's still too slow or un-usable for you, you can try to give you computer a specific task... like X-terminal or even a router...

I did make some old machines working again with these simples guidelines but i think the most important thing is to...

5)Have fun! I know i did!

I just got a snail mail from Comcast advertising a new service (at least in northern VA)... It is based on "allowing the whole family to be online at the same time" plan. Yes folks, these are the same high speed providers that cry wolf and complain about bandwidth hogs because bandwidth is expensive although they have not said anything to me and I have not noticed anything blocked yet.

A 802.11b wireless CM router all in one unit and 2/256 service for $64.99 with up to 5 machines. I currently pay $49 +$5 CM rental and only get 1.5/128 for one machine, of course my floppy Linux NAT/router handles that. So for basically $10 more a month I could get 25/100% faster speed and a free use of a wireless access point. Actually for me that 256 up would allow me to stream my own mp3's or my security webcam over ssh to work or anywhere I may be, my current 128 is barely to slow. The package does not seem like a bad idea. I could find NOTHING about this on their web site. My only concern is exactly what control will they have over that all in one device?

For those asking about special connecting software.. In my area its plain old DHCP. I brought my CM home, plugged it into my Freesco floppy based Linux distro on eth0 and it was working within seconds.

This firewall distro works great. I know everyone likes Freesco, and I use that too on occasion, but I've had the NetBSD firewall running at one of my client's offices for about a year and a half, and it's given me absolutely no trouble at all. Several people in our LUG use it as well.

Great product :-)

I mailed the developers and they said the next version will probably have more support for saving everything between boots. I might switch if that happens. I currently use FREESCO, a great little floppy- or hard drive-based router distribution.

No, it doesn't do traffic shaping or have really fancy packet dropping support (uses 2.0.38 kernel), but it does have a rockin' HTML/CGI admin interface, comes with DHCP, DNS, HTTP, LP, telnet, time, dial-in, and a few other servers I'm forgetting, all on a floppy. It kind of bugs me that you can't access the filesystem in BBIagent, but then you don't really have a need if it's not expandable. FREESCO also has a self-downloading, self-installing package system for expanding it with everything from Samba (*very* useful if you want a little NAS with your routing) to Apache to nmap.

That said, I really, really, really wish I could do traffic shaping with it. =) Maybe they'll upgrade the kernel in the next version.

Lime

• http://www.superant.com/smalllinux/
  
• http://ibiblio.org/vectorlinux/
  
• http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/
  
• http://www.xandros.net/
  
• http://www.gentoo.org/
  
• Smoothwall ...
  
• http://www.ipcop.org/
  
• http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/snf
  
• http://www.freesco.org/
  
• http://www.coyotelinux.com/
  
• http://leaf.sourceforge.net/
  
• http://www.gnatbox.com/Pages/gblight.html
  (this ones based on BSD IIRC)
  
• http://www.bbiagent.com/
  
• http://www.clarkconnect.org/"
  
• http://www.linux-firewall-tools.com/
  

Is what I use as my gateway. Boots off a floppy, runs on this crappy little 486, and firewalls me (to a certain degree) from a lot of crap out there.. Very useful for people with multiple PCs and a cable connection. Easy to setup and configure. Their website has a download of the floppy image, a manual and extras (e.g. drivers for network cards). Worth checking out.

• Astaro Security Linux: kernel 2.4.x
• BBIAgent: kernel 2.4.13
• ClarkConnect: iptables, kernel 2.4.9-31 (RH 7.2)
• Trinux: iptables, kernel 2.4.x (Slackware)

• Coyote Linux: kernel 2.2.19
• IPCop: kernel 2.2.x
• LEAF/LRP/Dachstein: kernel 2.2.19
• Mandrake SNF: kernel 2.2.19
• Smoothwall: kernel 2.2.19

• Freesco: ipfwadm, 2.0.38 (!)
• FWTK: Dunno, looks old, mentions ipfwadm

1. Freesco which I personnally use on a 486/dx2 with 8mb of ram. It has many functionalities like remote access, dhcp, dns, print server, firewalling, masquerading, bridging, support for many ethernet cards and best of all fits on a floppy (no HD required, but possible to do a HD install) Works like a charm and very easy to setup... almost plug and play (although not like windoze's plug and pray)
   
2. Coyote Linux which seems to offer a few more features than freesco, but requires 12mb of ram. Again, fits on a floppy.
   
3. SmoothWall which seems to be more of a feature complete firewalling solution includes web-based admin, proxy server and much more. It's larger (30MB or so) but seems fairly easy to use.
   

When friends want to share a cable modem I usually go over to the local computer surplus sale and get 2 PCs that have NICs in them and a HDD and intall freesco.

It is based on an old kernel, and doesn't have socks so not everything will work, but it's easy to set up and even an idiot can use the web-based panel.

For a super low hassle setup I'd recommend it. It goes right onto an ex DOS PC, no re-formatting or anything.

That's what I use on my little NAT/Gateway thing at home. Works like a champ. Web-based config + many other add-ons for this floppy distro. More put together than LRP IMHO. Check it out at: freeSCO.org. The dicumentation is pretty good, although it may not be as secure as other distros.

I agree that Linux running on old hardware is not a Goal, but a by-product of good coding practices and code optimization in the kernel, projects, etc... But i disagree that Linux should be steering away from the older hardware.

Take for example my current projects :

a 486DX I am working on to create a Linux Router using FREESCO
(just looking for some more *free* ISA NIC's :P)

and a P133 as a Squid/Apache/Mail/File Server for my home LAN and learning.

now sure, i could go out and buy two $300 boxes to do these and put on RH7.2 and have them ticking over nicely. However, that would be complete overkill... "The correct tool for the job"...

What use would 1800MHz be for something such as a File Server for my documents?!?! Its an overkill... Why waste a good 486 when it will do the job???

But, I do understand where you are comming from. Linux MUST continue to develop and evolve, but it would be stupid IMHO to make Linux specificly for "Newer" hardware...

I use Freesco on a DX2/66 with 16mb (no HD). Remote interface through thttpd, DHCP server, caching DNS, support for DynDns, time server, multiple NIC's and/or diald and dialup, all on a 1.44 floppy. By default, the logging is not very robust but it works fine for what I am doing.
You can do similar with the LRP

Not that the method the story describes is not good, just there are configurable alternatives to balance security and ease of use.

The latest stable version of Freesco is version 2.7. It is running kernel 2.0.36 (or 38).

I can say from experience that it is VERY stable. Six months (at least) up time. It is a floppy distro, but it can installed on a HD, and has a large selection of packages that it can run.

There is plenty of work being done on light weight Linuxs.

Check out Freesco

Freesco stands for "free cisco" but it can do much more than route. It is a single 1.44MB floppy disk distro built on Linux that has a router, firewall, DHCP server, DNS, Print server, web admin interface, web server, time server, ethernet bridge, and dialup client. I'm using it on an old 486 as a print server without a hard disk, monitor, or keyboard, and it's working great. Took about a 1/2 hour to set up.

Other light distros that I have not used are Trinux, theWall, Build Your Linux Disk (not a distro, but a way to make a single floppy with the tools you need on it), single floppy mp3 players (Amacdys), Fli4l ISDN Router, and many many others. There are also some multiple floppy distros, they fit on about 5 or 6 floppies.

Bero from Red Hat is working on a bootable CD based on RH RawHide that will automatically play the movie contents of that CD via xine, I think he calls it "VCR on a CD"

For computers with more disk space (500MB), if you want a GUI, I would suggest just installing a base X install and a window manager. You don't need Gnome or KDE, just the libraries to support Gnome or KDE apps. Should be less than a GB all said and done. A text based shell script can be used to allow newbie users to launch their apps.

Also, 500MB disks are about $5 now. Those can be used with software RAID0 to make a reasonably big disk to work from.

There are many things out there. I would suggest helping out with the many existing lightweight Linux projects rather than starting new ones.

I know it's not quite CISCO hardware, but there's this little floppy-based Linux distro called Freesco

I tried it while working for my CCNA and I was quite impressed: It emulates the CISCO command set almost completely, including access lists.

Ok it's not a 2600 but you might want to have a look at it.

Quentin
btw: 2nd post!

I put together a umsdos linux distro with x/icewin/ssh/ftpd/httpd on 4 floppys. Unrar it on a PC, and I have a instant server I can control remotely. I borrowed alot from other tiny linux distros, so if your interested, check out googles nice web directory.
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software /Operating_Systems/Linux/Distributions/Tiny/Floppy _Sized/

BBIAgent is broadband only, if you want a floppy router with dialup support for us "non-broadband" users, check out http://www.freesco.org. Picked up a 486 and 2 nics, boot floppy, instant nat dialup router.

-
Those who do not understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it -- badly. - Henry Spencer

Dig up an old 486 or old P90, drop in a couple of NICs and set up FreeSCO...

Easy, painless, secure, and best of all...Free (as in speech and beer).

I've heard that an old 486 is able to handle a T1, never mind a DSL connection.

I found a small form-factor AT&T Pentium 100mhz in the basement of our office complex. I installed FREESCO.

We've got a 50 user network in this office, and another 15 in the other office, they are connected by a T1. I plug our Cable modem into this box and then into the switch. Run DHCP from the box also. You can VNC/FTP/Telnet/Web in to designated PC's on our internal network. And the NAT psuedo-firewall.

This setup has ran perfect since it was put in around April. Fits on a floppy, no HD needed. No slow downs even with 60+ heaavy web/mail users.

The cable company wanted us to pay $400 for an 32 user net appliance and $799 for a unlimited user license for it.