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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!news.sprintlink.net!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!sdd.hp.com!hplabs!unix.sri.com!csl.sri.com!news!gilham From: gilham@lily.csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: FreeBSD routing Date: 20 Sep 1995 16:46:36 GMT Organization: Computer Science Lab, SRI International Lines: 37 Message-ID: <GILHAM.95Sep20094636@lily.csl.sri.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lily.csl.sri.com Hello, I'm at the point of using a FreeBSD box (Pentium 100) as a router. (I'm running FreeBSD-stable). However, I notice in the FreeBSD FAQ the following warning: ``It is our duty to warn you that, even when FreeBSD is configured in this way, it does not completely comply with the Internet standard requirements for routers; however, it comes close enough for ordinary usage.'' Exactly what does this mean??? Considering that FreeBSD is being touted for use as a router these days, I'm just wondering. We're planning on running 4 FreeBSD boxes in the near future. One is already up and is our `network server', providing FTP and WWW access, and will eventually also provide news and mail service, as well as routing, among other things. The other three will be NFS servers with gobs of disk space. A bit off the subject... A couple months ago I switched from Linux to FreeBSD on my personal machine at home. I did so because of Linux's linker-format change; I figured that as long as I had to do major reinstalls I might as well try the other alternatives. FreeBSD seems to be better in some ways (more solid code-base, better networking (I've also got a sparc station at home, so solid networking was pretty important for me)) and worse in others (flakey console support, somewhat less software). But here at work (I'm the system administrator for the Computer Science Lab at SRI) I am not willing to bet the farm on Linux, while I feel much more comfortable doing so with FreeBSD. -- Fred Gilham gilham@csl.sri.com