Happy New Year everybody, and thanks for all your replies to my earlier query
on this subject on the old mailing list.
I've held off replying while I did a bit more research about using astlinux as
a router, to avoid making a complete fool of myself in public. But I still
don't understand it all, so here goes anyway. :-)
I've got no problem with throttling my external connection to 90% of the
available bandwidth to avoid queueing problems. Obviously it would be nice to
have a system that copes with congestion without configuration, but I can live
with it.
I've discovered elsewhere that the net4801 won't cope with 100 Mbit/s ethernet
routing (between PCs on my SoHo LAN) but should cope with my 4 Mbit/s internet
connection OK. This is as I suspected, although it does make me wonder why my
(much cheaper!) Netgear router copes with it all right - presumably it contains
special hardware. This in turn makes me wonder whether the net4801 was a good
choice of hardware for this sort of thing. Anyway, I think I can avoid all the
speed problems by simply connecting my Netgear router downstream from the
astlinux box, with my PCs connected to the router and my phones to the astlinux
box. It's twice as much cable but what the heck.
I'm a bit puzzled that PBX-only mode is now the default, since that implies no
traffic shaping, which I would have thought would guarantee problems whenever a
big download or upload was in progress. What do people do in this situation?
Use a separate internet connection? Or a clever router?
Anyway, I now want to enable the other ethernet ports on my box, and it's not
obvious how to do this from reading rc.conf. My net4801 has seven ports (which
now looks like a mistake). Assuming I was happy with slower speeds I still
don't see how I can configure the unit to connect several phones or PCs to it.
Is there a hidden assumption here that I'm missing, that an external router is
always used? In PBX-only mode the phones connect to the EXTERNAL interface (the
only one active by default), right? So the asterisk box is just another device
on the internal LAN, rather than being physically connected between the phones
and the external internet as I had assumed. If so, then I think I need to buy
yet another router. :-(
I hope this is all clear. Maybe a couple of diagrams would help:
1. This is how I originally expected to connect things:
__________
| |----IP Phone
INTERNET---| astlinux |----IP Phone ...
| box |----Computer
|__________|----Computer ...
2. I now think PBX-only mode is meant to be connected like this:
________
| Router |----IP Phone
| |----IP Phone ...
INTERNET---| | __________
| |---| astlinux |
| | | box |
|________| |__________|
3. And this is how I now think the PCs should be connected:
________
| Router |----IP Phone
| |----IP Phone
INTERNET---| | __________ ________
| |---| astlinux |----| Fast |----Computer
| | | box | | Router |----Computer ...
|________| |__________| |________|
Does that make sense?
--
Phil McKerracher
www.mckerracher.net
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