[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> In the spirit of chiming in without having anything useful to say...

> But why use a new, powerful computer for that?
> If you have other tasks for the computer, that really make 
> use of it's power, you might encounter software problems 
> or update issues that might take down that computer on 
> occasion... during which time your routing function goes 
> away for the entire building.

I'm going to chime in and say it's a capital idea to run everything
through linux, since our house has been run that way since the mid
1990s. If you've got nice powerful linux systems that are up 24/7, I
don't see the need for an extra little box to do just the routing.

There is a point there, about the possibility of downtime when the
system is down for hardware maintenance or booted to load a new kernel,
but in practice for us, that can be managed fairly easily.

We used to route everything through my main workstation, so it was doing
routing/firewall, dns, smtp in addition to gaming/multimedia, but I
eventually decided to separate this out and now the
routing/firewall/vpn/dns/dhcp functions are on a smallish old celeron,
the smtp, webmail, spam quarantine and websites are on a little larger
machine, our gaming/multimedia are newish suse boxes, and we have a
couple of wireless access points  for the various macs around the house
and for visitors.

I guess there are pros and cons for each approach, but using linux as
gateway is one way to plunge in with both feet.

Joe
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