Fedora and CentOS are not that bad, if you're coming from FreeBSD. I would definitely look at CentOS, because Fedora has a high entropy factor. I've always been a huge BSD fan, but it's utility is being marginalized all the time. Really wish that community would wake up.
On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 11:45 PM, Kurt Buff <[email protected]> wrote: > Well, we *are* a relatively small firm. But, we've got about 230 > people on site, including about 80-90 (if memory serves) hardware and > software engineers, and then there are the sales staff, and our > customer installation/support staff, etc. > > We do need relatively serious bandwidth, though we couldn't justify > the cost of a full DS3. We have a 5mbit soft cap on the DS3 - if we > exceed that limit at the 95th percentile of the course of the month, > it's an extra $100/mbit - I can't remember what the base cost is, but > I think it's in the $1100 range. We've never exceeded the cap for more > than about an hour at a time, and when you factor in the down times > overnight and on the weekends, it works out really well. But it's > *really* nice to have it for those really large downloads. > > We got a screaming deal on it because the fiber was in the building, > not being used, and NTT was looking for money. We also have a T1, from > a different ISP, which isn't being used at the moment. I had planned > on implementing BGP on the router I built, but that might have to wait > a while. > > It seems that the manufacturer of the DS3 interface card I bought two > of (Sangoma A301) has dropped support for FreeBSD, and only supports > Fedora Core and CentOS. I'm not a fan of Linux, so I'm considering my > options, and got a quote for a Cisco machine that does DS3 and has a > couple NICs in it for about $11k. But, given that there are some > interesting drop-in packages for open source routing, I might > investigate one of those. Something like XORP, Vyatta, Quagga, or one > of the others. I'll have to learn how to configure BGP, but I figure I > can get the ISPs to help out with that. > > Kurt > > On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 17:57, Richard Stovall <[email protected]> wrote: > > <questions prompted by bandwidth envy> > > > > DS3? Holy cow! Haven't you written here that you're at a small mfg > > facility or something like that? What on earth do you use all that > > bandwidth for? > > > > </questions prompted by bandwidth envy> > > > > > >> I *love* my Sidewinders. When I purchased them it was from Secure > >> Computing, but they've since been bought by McAfee, I'm afraid. > >> > >> They have excellent prosy services, which some find annoying, but I > >> find very reassuring.. I also find them easy to manage. > >> > >> I have two at HQ in an HA configuration in front of my DS3, and two > >> smaller ones, one in each of my foreign offices. Very nice to manage. > >> Of course the reseller was a good part of that. We got them through > >> NCA, and the folks I dealt with there were stellar. > >> > >> I cannot comment on Cisco firewalls, since I've never used them. > >> > >> Kurt > >> > >> ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > >> ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > >> > > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > > > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
