For those that emailed wanting updates: After struggling for two days with floppyfw (nothing against it, worked great as a firewall except I couldn't get IPSEC to go), I decided to take someone's suggestion and try Freesco. What a brilliant piece of software! Grabbed the current version, copied a beta IPSEC-enabled kernel under it, wrote it to a floppy with rawrite.exe, booted it...and it flew the first time with full IPSEC support. Amazing stuff. Compared to STN, Freesco is not quite as easy to setup - you have to boot it, ask for "config mode", answer some questions, and then reboot to make your config live. It's definitely not as bone-simple as STN to configure, especially for those who only use Windows and have no experience with Linux terminology at all. (Hard to beat STN's nifty tabbed screens!) It _does_, however, appear to have an HTTP-accessible control panel, and also (incredibly) manages to fit tcpdump, netstat, a telnet daemon, a web server (thttpd), and a time server in...all on a single 1.44 diskette...and has 60k to spare, even. So for a more "power user" who's still not up to compiling the Linux kernel themselves, it's potentially a nice middle ground. Freesco's current release is based on Linux kernel 2.0.38, it's basically the same vintage as STN's core components (I think STN uses 2.0.36?). In its "router" mode doesn't appear to be any faster than STN (no surprise there) nor any more secure (maybe less secure if you don't explicitly disable the telnet daemon in the startup, which you should do right away). It says it can run in 6mb of memory, though 8 is supposed to be much more tenable and 16mb "roomy". Definitely I wouldn't recommend anyone switch to it from STN _unless_ they explicitly need the IPSEC support or some other feature, but it is fun to check out - www.freesco.com www.freesco.org (You can follow the home page links to "forums" for discussion and FAQs, or "downloads" to get the software itself.) I won't post about this topic here anymore, but will be glad to followup to any queries or questions. -David --- Sponsor's Message -------------------------------------- Get email and like it! Upgrade your brain with informative newsletters from IDG. From hot products to high-speed LANs, Linux to Novell, we�ve got the email you want--FREE at Topica! http://click.topica.com/aaaaKkbz8Rp2bAfyICc/PCWorld ------------------------------------------------------------ -- Visit http://www.ShareTheNet.com for info about ShareTheNet Visit http://www.topica.com/lists/sharethenet for info about this list ___________________________________________________________ T O P I C A The Email You Want. http://www.topica.com/t/16 Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Your Favorite Topics
