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If you want to save your money, you could read the advanced routing howto instead.

The people who wrote it really know what they're talking about.

Also, Linux router is a router on a floppy disk with most of the hard work done for you, so a lot of the information in the book will be redundant.

And just as a point, software routing is not really appropriate for large networks, so you're not going to throw away those Cisco boxes any time now.

From a marketing manager's point of view, it doesn't look like a decent sollution to anything, it looks like cash. Personally, I don't see the point of such a product. You have 'firewall' software (BlackIce/Lockdown and other crap), which would perform the same function. The problem with these is, is that when you're on a LAN they're useless. This is another crappy idea that restricts infiltration protection to one machine, that is also dedicated to a user..A user who will always screw things up. I'm using a rebuilt 486 with an LRP disk. It's never shut down, never rebooted, and will still be able to route/protect my other workstation if this one goes down. If I had one of those IMHO useless cards in this machine, my other workstation would be as useless as this one in it's inoperative state. (Unless I wanted to do something offline..which isn't likely :P)

Sony have a similar product, HiFD. Apparently it's faster than LS120, holds 200Mb and of course, is not compatible.

While the LS120 is slower than a zip, it's main advantage is that it completly replaces the floppy drive. Yes you can boot from it on new motherboards, and linux recognises it just fine (/dev/hd ). Also, with syslinux you can boot small distros, such as LRP and get the same advantage as with a normal floppy: You can write-protect the media, easily.
It's just the thing you need for backing-up your data... if it weren't so expensive (both the drive and its media)

Just on a side note, I've read the new superdisk drives will let you format normal floppies to up to 32Mb, but can't find the reference to this anywhere... any link?

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I'm an @home user. Before I learned the value of having a firewall (LRP rocks!), I was cracked once (IMAPd) and had my DNS killed (BIND buffer overflow; killed the daemon but didn't get root-kitted).

Based on my friends logs, an @home customer can expect constant port scans.

Don't get me wrong - I like the service; people just shouldn't run unsecured systems. (For that matter, nor should you leave the keys in your car. ;-)

If your O/S is inherently unsecure (like Windows), I would definetly employ a firewall. I use LRP (I like the control), but I know folks having good luck with those cute LinkSys units.

Let me first issue a caveat. Cheap is in the eye of the beholder.

That said, I think the solution is here. Find any old preferable Pentium based box with at least 2 PCI slots, and some Trendnet 4 port 10/100 hub pci card kits w/ a single port 10/100 card and a 15 cable ($79 incl. shipping) and there you have it. Bridge the 2 hub cards and use whatever other nics you want and have room for. Use the Linux Router Project Eiger based version. Here's a link to an image w/ DNS caching, dhcpd, dhcpcd (if you need it), some web based reporting. This guy already did the hard part for you. Just add the rtl8139 module to it and follow the directions to run it headless (easy to do). Yes, tulip based cards have less latency but these work well.

Your total investment should be under $300 for a 16 MB firewall, with 8 port hub, fast ethernet on the DMZ and WAN side, etc. Pick a system like a decent clone or the Dell Optiplex that doesn't need keyboard, mouse and monitor hooked up. I'm using a similar configuration for building infrastructure in office buildings. And it works well.

Out here in the wild west of Canada (Alberta), Telus has a very good DSL service. I've had mine for over a year and it has worked great. Once they had done maintenece on a server and I had to restart my server to get reestablished, but other than that no problems.

I get it for $39.95 (CAD) (26.65 USD) a month from Telus, they provided the router/DSL Modem (Cisco 625). I think they have changed routers, and are now even offering self intallation. I have 1.5mb downstream and 512kb upstream, and being in a relatively new subdivision, I have a very good connection and regualarly get 1.6mb downstream.

They use standad DHCP (I'm allowed 2 addresses)and I have just recently switched over to a 486 box running LRP (Linux Router Project) and it work damn fine.

They scale up very good too, for $89.95 (CAD) you can get 2.5mb downstream/1.0mb upstream, and for 169.95 (CAD) you can get 4.0mb downstream/1.5mb upstream and 5 statis IP addresses.

All in all, a very good service in my opinion,
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THere are a few ways to do this... A small footprint PC, combined with LRP Linux a single floppy based distro, and a Sangoma WANPIPE and poof T1/Frac T1 Router/Bridge w/ integral CSU/DSU. With the cost of Pentium and older 486 computers these days this makes a good combo.

Talking of things that fit in RAM, the linux router project , is a project set up to make a distro small enough to fit on a single 1.44MB floppy disk for networking stuff. Really who needs 128MB?

Last weekend I set my (computer literate, but not Linux-literate) brother up with Coyote Linux which is based off the Linux Router Project. Single-floppy distro with DHCP server and some other goodies (VPN, no services running, etc). If you're a Linux user, it's free of charge, but you can purchase the full edition which contains a Windows setup tool which runs...you figured that out.

For people who don't know how Linux can help them, this is a great way to show them.

Under linux, I can pare it down to fit on a floppy. And that still has more than just the OS. I have a floppy that boots the OS and then init spawns bash. This is the OS and two apps. Init is debatably part of the OS. Bash is an app. I can turn it off -- I don't have to spawn anything -- init could just sit there and the OS would be happy.

Yes, I know about BusyBox. I've been tinkering with the single-floppy Linux Router Project packages.

I'm in the Kingston area, on COGEGO@Home, living in a student house. We have six computers sharing a cablemodem connection using a linux box running the Linux Router Project. Very nice. It has no HD, no fan, and does its job quietly and well. A hub and two shitty network cards were all we had to buy.

The cable guys who installed the modem were very understanding about it too... I pretended that my computer was the only one being connected, but strangely enough they ended up leaving behind enough free coax cable so that we could run it into the closet... :)

Bottom line, I have lots of friends who are running LANs behind the scenes, and, at least in the Kingston area, none of them have been hassled.

And, @Home sucks. Is ADSL any better?

--

I cannot read the site (already /. 'ed?) but from the heading it sound like the lpr linux router from a flop project.

I've done it with Debian. And since the Slashdot gang have a bias for Debian, this should get mod'ed up :)

The Debian installation program didn't like the name for the device (/dev/hdb?). So I pointed it at a then-blank partition on a hard disk and then switched to another VT, unmounted it (it's mounted somewhere special in /) and mounted the LS-120 there instead. The installation program continued on from there.

The only tricky part was getting LiLO (or Grub) to boot from the LS-120. I eventually found instructions on the Linux Router project site. See booting 'Higher' Density formatted disks for info on getting Lilo working. The magic for Lilo was the bios=0x83 (or whatever) parameter. I never got Grub booting it, but it's been a while since I last tried.

It's no speed daemon [sic], but it's quite OK for a rescue disk. I think the LS-120 is meant to be 2X for normal 1.44M floppies, so it spins faster. And it seeks much faster.

I use apt-move with my real installation on the hard disk. So every now and then I boot to the floppy and update packages from the HD. nice :)

Now we're getting way offtopic, but I'd recommend getting yourself a cheap 486 box with a couple ethernet cards, install Linux or the LRP, and read up on IP Masquerading

Well, there's always the ever-trusty Linux Router Project single-floppy distribution. That's exactly what it's designed for: a single-floppy that can do NAT/IP masq/routing etc. Unfortunately, Dave Cinege, the maintainer of the official distribution recently suffered a major systems failure, so the website might not be up. Might want to try the catch-all info site, lrp.c0wz.com for mirrors and better information, as the main site is outdated, anyway.

Also, there's a spinoff distribution using 2.2.x, and named after mountains. Previously there was Materhorn, and now it's Eiger, I think. It's maintained by Matthew Grant and is located at lrp.plain.co.nz.

There's also a commercial LRP spinoff called Coyote Linux. Looks pretty easy to use, but it costs money if you want a Windows-based disk creator (the free one is Linux based).

Trevor Marshall at Byte did a series of articles on using LRP as a home router. You can find them starting here to see how to have just a modem and your 10bT NICs set up. They continue here to add in DHCPd and 100bT cards, which teaches you all about LRP modules. Not sure there are any more in the series, but you can look around Byte's site.

I concur with just about everyone here that the Linux Router Project (LRP) is a floppy solution that can run on even a lowly 386 CPU. You should be able to find such a system for $50, and not have to spend the $$$ you mentioned.

Otherwise, if you really don't want to use a PC, I'd grab something like the SonicWall SOHO/10 for around $400. As of last year, SonicWall's products were the only ICSA-certified firewalling products for under $4K. The SOHO/10 is a little 25MHz 68300-powered Coldfire running some RTOS (probably VxWorks). The SOHO/10 allows upto 10 nodes transparent access out, and even provides one-to-one NAT (private-to-public IP mapping) if you want to share out services, which you can filter, of course, by service.

Just FYI, their high-end product, the SonicWall PRO, is powered by a 233MHz SA 110 StrongArm chip and features a myrid of VPN and encryption options built-in, along with a DMZ port. It lists for $2995, not bad for its capabilities. But I figure you're not looking to spend THAT much. ;->>>

-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

I found that using this search on http://www.linuxrouter.org/.

I found that using this search on http://www.linuxrouter.org/.

I found that using this search on http://www.linuxrouter.org/.

I found that using this search on http://www.linuxrouter.org/.

Check out Linux Router Project.

On my way to looking up other things, I noticed LEM, an 8MB Linux with X Windows. Of course, the Linux Router Project seems to be the most active single-floppy Linux project -- and a new release is scheduled for today. Once you reach one of those sites you'll find links to other sites, although most do not include X Windows.

I've been looking at the Linux Router Project for a home firewall/NAT box. One page or another that I've come across suggests that you can ditch the fan when you remove the disk drive from an old '486 system; LRP boots off a floppy and runs off a RAM disk. Hmm. It would be nice if anyone could verify that it's possible to run a '486 w/o a fan. I have run such boxes for long periods with the cover off, preventing the fan from causing any significant.airflow over the CPU or other components.

However, cisco may need to worry about losing market share to linux:
linux-router.org
cyclades
sangoma

I probably wouldn't use linux as a router everywhere, but it certainly makes sense in some situations. I would guess that competition from linux based routers will cause Cisco to lower the prices on their hardware, at least somewhat.

Mine is running on a 486, no probs. Our LRPs at work run P100 full 100mbps, so I assume a freesco on a P100 will be similar.

Scott

"...hardware such as those old 386s can be put to use." Yeah, right. What recent version of Linux will run on a 386 with maybe 8 Meg of RAM (but probably only 4) *and* fit on that under 528M hard drive that's the biggest thing the mobo's BIOS will take? I've got some old hardware I'd like re-use.

There are a bunch of "micro" Linuxes out there that are designed to run entirely on a floppy like Trinux, although they recommend at least 12MB RAM... &nbsp There's also the Linux Router Project and FreeSCO for using Linux as a router (which is what alot of the old 386s and 486s are used for). &nbsp For a list of full blown distributions, you can go here. &nbsp This is pretty cool.

Linux is a kernel. Windows has a kernel. A Kernel is that piece of software which sits on top of the hardware and provides services which user apps take advantage of. You cannot run two kernels at once without a hardware emulation program like VMware.

For starters, how about bootable linux cds?

Have you tried to boot a redhat CD? Caldera? These are bootable. Granted, they boot to an installation program. You can make a boot disk which mounts a live CD filesystem. Slackware, among others has this.

the ability to launch a trimmed down Linux kernel as an app running alongside the other MSWin apps.

Dude, Linux is not a application. Do you not understand what an OS is? Let windows lusers wallow in their crapulance. They obviously don't need linux, so spare yourself a little grief.

One architecture (not too complex?) might be a virtual network card for MSWin that redirects to the Linux TCP/IP stack (the way VMWare does).

VMware is available for NT, so folks can boot linux in a window. Of course, this is like building a castle on swamp land ("But the FORTH castle stood...").

Samba's author keeps pointing out all the ways that MS's implementations have bugs... well, how come they just work, and I have to keep squinting at smb.conf?)

Samba on windo~1 is just a goofy idea. SMB is crappy protocol. I've seen *huge* problems with network browsing. Just cut the cord, son. It only hurts for a minute.

But perhaps they/you need to reinspect that notion: I want a platform or platforms that offer me APIs and services.

API's are for programmers. You could offer a *nix API to win32 (that's what cyngus offers), but you're still building applications on wet sand.

other people here are suggesting a "standard GUI".

Bash is pretty standard across not only linux, but *BSD. As for X, that's just a damned silly notion. :-)

WYSIWYG word processor that can read and create .DOC mail attachments,

StarOffice. Have a blast.

a mail client that works with MS Exchange Server,

Now here is pay dirt. The *only* reason I can't 86 NT at work is because of that bastard Outlook and Exchange. I need access to the stoopid public folders. The day a stable compatible (but not a CLONE! Sweet christ I hate Outlook), is the day I cut the cord. Con much gusto!

All and all, it appears that you have all the things you wanted, MattMann. For additional "trial" Linux distros, try the Linux Router Project. Linux on one floppy!

Good luck with the crusade. You'll need it.

Silence is golden!

Configure the firewall with no services, one NIC for the Internet, one NIC for your DMZ where your Internet-visible servers is, and one NIC for your local LAN with your IP-Masqueraded access.

Techies wouldn't want them for their personal workstations, but imagine using one as a router, firewall, mail server, etc on a home LAN. All you'd need would be the slots in the back for ethernet cards.

I might pick up a couple.

Take care,

Steve

--Jamin Philip Gray
jamin@DoLinux.org

The only complaint I have is that for the box to recognize the second ISA NIC, I had to compile the hex address directly into the kernel.

That's from a technical point of view, micros~1 licenses cost probably more than the computer itself, but there you go...

Why I am mentioning DOS?
DOS+DJGPP was the platform I started to do image processing on. A 486DX2-66 with 8Mb RAM... That was in 95. Actually, I used TC too, but extended/expanded memory scheme was just not for me :-)
So how much time do you think it takes to do adaptive equalisation on a 640x640 image, using a DX2? I'd say about 15s...
Okay, you need to do a bit of thinking, be familiar with hand optimisation and the like (loop unrolling and early loop breaking anyone? ;) but think about it! I'm sure if I tried the same using IDL or matlab (sorry, I meant PDL and octave) I'd get worse results on my PII-400...

The key is, it takes much more than a computer degree to do real optimisation by hand, it takes time... and who's willing to take the time?

What about Linux? (this is /. after all)
Well, Linux router allows you to do routing stuff all on one floppy. It works great on a 486, eventhough it may be a little slow a computer to do caching DNS and masquerading at the same time :-) (I'm switching to a Pentium 133 - 16Mb RAM)

So there you go, old computers are great if you can find some use for them... did I mention I love to program Z80 assembly on my Amstrad CPC6128? ;-)

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Unless you want a really spiffy brand new kernel on your router (doesn't bother me) the Linux Router Project disk is a damn fine way to go.

I have mine set up on an old 486 in a pizzabox case and it works beautifully. All I did was tweak a few IP numbers, tell it to do transparent proxying and I haven't noticed any difference from being dialled up directly, apart from my flatmates sucking all the bandwidth that is :).

That said, I am currently in the process of designing a disk specifically for doing dialup router/firewall duties that will be somewhat more current and easier to configure than the LRP disk. mail me if you are interested.

Would these be considered different Linux OS's then:

Real Time Linux
Linux Router Project

They are patched versions of Linux, but I would still consider them different at the kernel level.

This reminds me of the ESR/TED battle over ncurses; when ESR started taking offense, TED had been issuing weekly patch sets for some months, answering questions on the mailing list and Usenet, and being generally very responsive, while ESR hadn't issued any releases in months and wasn't very visible at the ncurses maintainer. I was surprised when ESR suddenly re-emerged and started complaining about TED hijacking the code. People don't take over control of packages lightly; they do so only when forced to because the original maintainer appears to be inactive.

This reminds me of the ESR/TED battle over ncurses; when ESR started taking offense, TED had been issuing weekly patch sets for some months, answering questions on the mailing list and Usenet, and being generally very responsive, while ESR hadn't issued any releases in months and wasn't very visible at the ncurses maintainer. I was surprised when ESR suddenly re-emerged and started complaining about TED hijacking the code. People don't take over control of packages lightly; they do so only when forced to because the original maintainer appears to be inactive.

• Mr. JQH's page (Erik Green) is visually pleasing but full of whines and gripes (the above article really) about the situation.
  
• Mr. J's page (Dave Cinege) is short and to the point with important news and source. It has no gripes or whines...
  

I use a 2.0.36 Linux box that acts as a firewall and IPMasq (NAT) router. In order to play any cool game that requires a connection be made from the game server back to the client (StarCraft etc) I have to create a port forward using `ipautofw`.

Example of my IPMasq and forwarding setup.

# Permit IP masquerading for the 192.168.1.* network
/sbin/ipfwadm -F -p deny
/sbin/ipfwadm -F -a m -S 192.168.1.0/24 -D 0.0.0.0/0
# set up auto forward for StarCraft
ipautofw -A -r tcp 6112 6112 -h 192.168.1.12
ipautofw -A -r udp 6112 6112 -h 192.168.1.12
ipautofw

-A (add)
-r tcp 6112 6112 (using PROTOCOL forward ports LOW to HIGH)
-h 192.168.1.12 (Host to receive forwarded packets)

Also consider checking out the Linux Router Project. You can download a 1440Kb disk image that contains a complete Linux system already setup with everything you need sans redir. If you compile redir and copy it to the disk, you can mount the disk and back up the root.lrp with redir included. LRP will save you alot of time in building out your own NAT router. Its a really cool tool!

Chase

On the one hand, Linux is adapting to Desktop computers in terms of integrated features and this is a good thing, nobody questions that, but on the other hand, Linux's size means its suitability for embeded applications becomes questionable. Not as questionable as using NT but still... (correct me if I'm wrong, and I wish I were, but I do have heard micros~1 is pushing its NT kernel (if there is such a thing...) for embeded applications)
Anybody remember this /. article about a cash machine BSODing?

Now... there is always a way to compile a custom kernel with minimal functionality, thanks god! the size of the compressed kernel source means for a great part that there are now lots of features / drivers / functionality that were just not available a couple of years ago.
However, how does a minimal 2.2.10 compares with a 1.2.13? (both considered stable if I recall correctly)

This is important, because projects like linuxrouter depend on being embedable, either on a floppy or much much more important, on devices like the diskonchip thingy. Do you see the market? routers, dns, xterms, you name it! Any of those devices could work on an embeded 486 with 8Mb or more of RAM. Is this 486/8Mb under my desk, a masquerading router/caching DNS? I thought so too.

Now... you can spit on Linux, and use QNX ( check it, QNX is the king!).
OR, because we're dealing here with a minimal Linux, actually designed for embeded applications, there is a lesser chance to get it wrong, therefore adding to security /stability / once again, you name it. Also, but some people might argue this is not the point (then please tell me what is the point about Linux), make it more attractive to hardware hackers.
Hackable alternatives to QNX might include katix, ELKS or even FreeDOS... and of course, uClinux.

Well well well,those are just some thoughts of mine, I'm nowhere involved with The Kernel, therefore I'm not in a very good position to critisize it, I just hope that the right people have reached the same conclusions or are aware of the fact that we may loose an important market if we only concentrate on desktops and above.

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"Linux" is just a kernel to an OS. Most (all?) distributions using the Linux kernel also use utilities from the GNU project. If you ever download the source code to FreeBSD, you will notice along with the kernel source is the source to everything else on the system.

As far as Linux security, take a look at rootshell.com. Most of those are for Linux based systems. Needless to say, one stupid CGI script can defeat the security on any system.

I can't really speak about the stability of the systems... Just that FreeBSD developers tend to make this work first then mark it as stable. Linux kernels seem to add things all the time to stable versions without testing. On one system I administer which needs to be up 100%, I have stuck with 2.0.37 because of the problems still with the "stable" 2.2.x line. I'm not trying to bait people but Slashdot is the perfect example with kernel problems. I'm not saying this wouldn't happen with FreeBSD but most of the servers for pair.com have been up for more than a month. They claim 51,000,000 hits/day accross 125 servers which works out to Slashdot's .5mil/day rate.

PicoBSD is a version of FreeBSD which runs on low-end hardware. Something like the LRP.

And no, Slackware isn't BSD based. It is just like Redhat, Debian, and SuSE but with different init scripts and package management.

Yes they definitely do have support for linux; unfortunately (last I know) it was binary-only support.

Use of DOC or IDE Flashdisks is often discussed on the LRP (Linux Router Project) mailing list. have a look at http://www.linuxrouter.org/.

I believe the Linux Router Project ( http://www.linuxrouter.org/) may be what folks are looking for here.... the idea is a mini-Debian distro-on-a-floppy. 'Tis pretty slick, what little I've played with it. Amazing what you can cram into 1.44MB. (Reminds me of the old days of the 255-byte BASIC games :) :)

der rezident old fsck...

That'd be these guys, the whole shebang fits on a floppy.
It runs off a ramdisk and has a menu based front end.
One reason Debian rocks is because the distro is broken down by licensing.
The main distro is strictly GPL software. It's also the most thoroughly tested.
Personally, I like SuSE on my desktop,
but IMNSHO Debian is _the_ way to go on a server.
Now RedHat, OTOH...thats the AOL of Linux distros,
a good place to start, but after a while it's time for greener pastures.

You could always try Linux Router you don't need a hard disk to use it.