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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>My situation:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>I have a cable modem (COMCAST 6Mbit d/l) and am about to also
have DSL (Verizon 3 Mbit d/l). I was thinking of using CentOS (4.4, 4.5, or
5??) as a router/dhcp server/firewall for my home network consisting of 3 to 6
computers at any given time. I seek the wisdom of the members of this list on
the following issues:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>-- Is CENTOS a good direction to go? I do not mind
manually configuring things or installing lots of packages, and am doing this
as both a learning experience for myself and proof of concept for a customer.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>-- Is it possible/hard/easy/trivial to share the load
between the two connections? Have either link fail and things still work
correctly?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>-- I plan to build a box for this job – looking for
general recommendations of how much horsepower (mem/disk space, etc) is
required<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>-- What are the implications of two pipes for incoming connections
such as DynDNS based remote desktop or VNC, or web server, FTP, etc<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>The basic hardware layout I see is 3 nics, 1 GB RAM, 60 GB
disk space. 1 NIC for each WAN port, 1 NIC for my local net, some recent CPU.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>I have been browsing through the “Linux Advanced
Routing & Traffic Control HOWTO,” but am still not on top of how to
get done what I’m looking for. I understand that there are probably products
that I could buy to do this, but my preference is to do it myself.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Sorry if my questions are too basic. Please feel free to
tell me off if so. Thanks.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>rsubasic<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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