*BSD News Article 90983


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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!not-for-mail
From: Chooka <dhenshaw@silas.cc.monash.edu.au>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Burden on a Pentium running FreeBSD and connected to the Internet
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 18:06:31 +1100
Organization: Monash University
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Hi all,

I have two questions..
I'm considering creating a LAN at home with 2+ machines connected to it.

One will be a dedicated FreeBSD box (I'm using 2.1.5 at the moment - but
am considering upgrading - someone have a list of the flaws found in
each release ?) 

The other(s) will be Win95 boxes (maybe dual OSed with FreeBSD). 
Primarily these machines will be used for work and possibly internet
access.  It is likely that they will spend a large portion of time
switched off.  Therefore, they shouldn't perform any critical network
services.....

My intention would be to use a leased line to an ISP who would allocate
me a static IP address (or range of ?).  This would probably run at
28.8k.  

I'd like to set the FreeBSD box up to connect permenantly over this line
and act as a router allowing access to the Internet through it (i.e. as
a gateway ?).  Given that the machine is performing routing duties can
someone clarify whether running it as a mail server for the other
machines and as a WWW server would impose to much of a burden on the
system ?

Ideally I'd also like to run named so that when the other machines on
the network are "down" that mail is stored on the FreeBSD box.  If I
want to retrieve mail using one of these machines from the FreeBSD box
I'd need to run some kind of POP server right ?

As you can see my demands on the FreeBSD box are quite high .
	
	Apache
	POP Server
	Router
	Gateway etc...

And to add to the burden I'd like to use the FreeBSD box to do news to a
narrow (less than 10) set of news groups....

Am I expecting to much ?

My second question is about monitoring traffic to the FreeBSD box....

The ISP I'm considering using offers a system whereby you only pay for
traffic you _RECEIVE_.  This is charged on a per megabyte basis.

I'd like to run some kind of process to log a total of the number of
packets and the number of bytes received on each interface 
i.e. the ppp0 interface which is receiving internet traffic and sending
it and the network (ethernet or whatever) interface which should only be
receiving local traffic....

I'd like to produce accurate and concise logs so that I can monitor my
usage and if necessary restrict it based upon these statistics.
i.e. I I've received more than 10Meg of traffic then I'd disable access
from my network to the Internet or shutdown the WWW server etc.

Does anyone know how I could do this ?
I've heard of SNMP and the like but they just confuse me!!!

Any advice appreciated....

Regards, 
David Henshaw

P.S. Posts only please....I've got no e-mail access at the moment. :)

-- 
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