I ran across this old newsgroup posting. I can't quite figure out the context, or if she just posted it in a vacuum. I wonder what kind of discussion it provoked back then. I tried searching the archives and came up with only this message.
I think we all know what the perfect router is. ;-) George Luft Trumbull, CT From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mary Mack) Subject: the prefect router Date: 1999/08/29 Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Trace: news.uswest.net 935900125 216.161.87.53 (Sat, 28 Aug 1999 23:15:25 CDT) Organization: Some days more then others MIME-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 23:15:25 CDT Newsgroups: comp.dcom.xdsl The real question/problem with all adsl services is the router. The router determines the experience. The very sad truth is that there is no router/software combo that is anyway near the experience of dail-up users. Below is a list I shamelessly stole from a web page. Uswest.net's cisco 675 is not even close. I have said in the past I happy with the service. I don't think uswest is any worse than any other isp on the xdsl side. I think with time uswest and other isp's will be better. 1. Ease of Installation 2. Bind address translation to any interface Network cards, ISDN, Modems, WAN, etc... 3. Bind address translation to any number of interfaces If the gateway machine has 3 or more interfaces, or even translation on all interfaces. 4. Dial-up gateway support The ability to rotate between dial-up profiles based upon a set of rules without user intervention. For instance, when the number of hours has been used up for one particular profile. The ability to bind the NAT application to the dial-up adaptor, without specifying a particular dial-up profile. ie. To manually dial every connection Automatic dialling based upon a set of rules. ie to connect if there is a request for a particular domain, or port, but not to anything for other requests (vice versa). 5. NAT Support NAPT Static NAT Dynamic NAT Load balancing 6. Port mapping To map specified port to particular address on the private network. ie. map all port 25 and 110 requests to a particular mail server, all port 80 requests to the web server, and so on. Including load balancing. 7. Firewall capability Specify any number of rules based on source address, destination address, destination port and so on. Demilitarised zone (DMZ) support. Detection of rogue connections or connection attempts. 8. Ability to perform translation to any IP address, including those that are considered 'private' addresses Many ISPs run a private address space on their modem banks! Therefore the 'external' address may not be a public and therefore only routable within the ISP address space. 9. Bandwidth throttling and prioritisation Specify specific destination ports and their priority (ie SMTP, POP or Telnet to be given first priority, etc...). Specify source addresses in the private network to be given priority above others. Priorities should be using a priority level, rather than an ordered priority. There would only need to be 5 or so levels of priority. Priorities should not be in a single ordered list, as the user may desire to have some protocols given the same priority. 10. Detect active / inactive Internet connections The gateway should be able to detect if there is an active Internet connection. If the gateway is running in manual connection mode, clients should not receive a timeout. Ideally, for clients using web browsers, the browser should be sent a user a page stating the Internet connection is current down (the page that is sent should be a normal HTML file, which could therefore edited / customised with whatever the administrator desires) 11. E-mail To act as an SMTP gateway for the private network for multiple accounts, and cache e-mails until the connection is active, or to connect at a specified time. To retrieve e-mail from multiple POP accounts from an ISP and 'deliver' them to aliases on a POP server at the gateway. This would also include if some users have multiple ISP POP accounts, and to have all e-mail 'delivered' to the one alias on the gateway. Specify if the e-mail gateway can automatically connect to the Internet, at a specified time, or wait until an active Internet connection has been made through other means The gateway should optionally be able to intercept port 25 requests and cache them until the next Internet connection is established The gateway should optionally be able to detect new users requesting connections to an external POP server, and be able to add this user to the list of POP accounts the gateway downloads. If the original request is successful, then, in future the gateway should intercept requests this client is making and redirect them to the gateway's own POP server. 12. News feed To act as a NNTP gateway for the private network, caching news posts until the connection is active, or to connect at a specified time (the same specified time as for the mail gateway). The gateway should optionally be able to detect / intercept new users requesting connections to an external NNTP server, and be able to cache the newsgroup list for that server. Also, the gateway should be able to detect what newsgroups the client is requesting, and to add these newsgroups to the list of newsgroups to be periodically cached. It should also be able to keep record of how often newsgroups are being requested, and in the case of a particular newsgroups not be requested for a given time period (say 7 days, etc.) not remove this newsgroup from being cached until it is requested again. 13. Transparent HTTP object cache If the gateway has support for a http object cache (ie http 'proxy') it should be completely transparent to client machines (ie, web browser does not require proxy configuration, and can be thus configured to use a proxy server which is external to the gateway). Configurable update frequency, including different update frequencies for each individual client machine, or specific URL (ie a website is only updated at midnight). Must be able to interpret page expiration values (eg form submission, or webmail) Must not cache by default known 'webmail' providers. 14. Transparent application support In addition to the conventional Internet protocols (http, ftp, nntp, smtp, pop, telnet, dns, etc..) the gateway should provide transparent application support (ie, no configuration required on either the gateway, or the client machine, and provide support for multi client machines using the same protocol) for the following: - ICQ - IRC ? DCC - H.323 and variants - Real Audio / Video, VDO, etc? - Peer-to-peer games, including battle.net, gamezone, kali, etc? - Any other protocols that use specific address and port information, including those that transmit address information within the data or communication stream 15. Remote configuration using any forms-capable web browser (in small or large networks) Should be able to map the remote configuration 'site' to the IP address of the default gateway address on the private network, and to any port number. The ability to map the remote configuration 'site' to another IP address would also be useful. Should be an authenticated connection, and be able to restrict access by source address or subnet. Should not require Java support on the client browser. Support for encrypted connections from the web browser to the NAT router desirable. 16. Administration and configuration (in large networks) For NT Server based networks - NAT configuration via Microsoft Management Console or Internet Service Manager (including if the NAT router is remote to the server) - User authentication via domains or active directory or LDAP For Netware based networks (including if the NAT router is remote to the server) - NAT configuration via NDS - User authentication via NDS or LDAP For generic or non-heterogeneous networks - NAT configuration via SNMP or telnet - User authenticaton via LDAP 17. For Windows 95/98/NTWS gateways (small and soho networks) Full 'Network Control Panel' integration. ie, not run as a separate application where possible. Transparent to users working on the gateway machine (Just in case a user closes the NAT application by mistake or on purpose). Although, an icon in the System Tray that cannot be disabled would be OK. Also, users logging on and off of the gateway machine should not affect the NAT application in anyway. ie, run as a service. ------------------------------------------------------- This sf.net email is sponsored by: Influence the future of Java(TM) technology. Join the Java Community Process(SM) (JCP(SM)) program now. http://ads.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/redirect.pl?sunm0004en ------------------------------------------------------------------------ leaf-user mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/leaf-user SR FAQ: http://leaf-project.org/pub/doc/docmanager/docid_1891.html
