* Tony Frank writes to Rowan_Crowe, on Monday September 29 1997
   at 19:39:

 RC>> Plenty! My home router is a 386dx40 with 8Mb of RAM, its only
 RC>> function is to route IP packets and provide primary DNS for
 RC>> 'sensation.net.au' and a couple of other domains. Even 8Mb is
 RC>> fairly generous for what it does, but it's spare RAM so it's not
 RC>> going to waste. The "office" router is a P90 with 24Mb RAM as
 RC>> that runs a HTTP/FTP proxy, news, several dialins and permanent
 RC>> links, routing daemons, etc. My 2 unix boxes are at
 RC>> fairly opposite extremes.

 TF> Ahuh...  I just seem to have a multitude of 486dx2-66's at the
 TF> moment... 2 with 16 meg ram, 1 with 8 meg.  There's just a bit of a
 TF> monitor & keyboard shortage, though I'm sure I can find enough
 TF> keyboards providing I use some of the older "weird &
chunky" ones...
 TF> hehe...    There is a bit of a case shortage too, but that's never
 TF> stopped me in the past.     I figured, I dont need a monitor or a case
 TF> to run a unix system once it's configured, I have all these spare
 TF> systems just gathering dust, I want to play with a lot of this
 TF> stuff...    :-)

Hmmm...lucky you. I managed to blow up a 486dx40 motherboard a little while
ago, and had to replace it with a 386dx40. The "downgrade"
doesn't bother me (with FreeBSD, more RAM is generally better than more raw
CPU power :) ), but I had put aside the 386dx40 m/b for a new project I'm
working on.

Time to watch VIC_TRADING I guess. :)

 RC>> Why not get a dedicated line? :) I was doing dialup with my
 RC>> BBS/mailer line and was finding I was online for hours at a time,
 RC>> during that time people couldn't get their mail polls through...

 TF> The problem there is basically the $ - with my present job I havn't
 TF> had work for the last 1.5 months, so the budget is very thin, and at
 TF> the moment the family uses the BBS line to dial in for hours each
 TF> night anyway.  (The 3 callers per week I think is mostly due to them
 TF> not being able to get in between 6pm & 11pm :-( )   I can't really
 TF> complain too much, since I'm not the owner of the line & I havn't
 TF> contributed to the bill for quite some time now.

Fair enough. I was in a similar situation, I got my 2nd line installed at
half price when there was a special on... after that I had a pseudo full
time link, a dialup account that didn't need to be disconnected when I went
to bed. ;)

 RC>> If you've got the ca$h then think about a permanent link...
 RC>> Telstra charge $500 install once off, then 19c per Mb inbound. No
 RC>> monthly charges, just pure volume charging. Or I can offer you a
 RC>> perm link at similar rates... ;)

 TF> I presume this is for 14.4k/28.8k dialup?

Yup. http://www.telstra.net/

ISDN is the same per meg price, although install costs a little more (as
does the hardware and line rental at your end).

 RC>> I'm in a similar situation. The DOS machine and frontdoor is
 RC>> almost a legacy, for people to log into Sensation Brunswick they
 RC>> come through the DOS machine. Unfortunately the ^&*{at}# likes to
 RC>> lock up at least a few times a day, sometimes when a user is
 RC>> online.

 TF> :-)   My BBS system only locks up if I play with it... ehehe...  It
 TF> sits there stable as hell for up to 30 days (longest recorded strech =
 TF> 29.5 days) and then I come along and start playing around with some
 TF> new program I'm tinkering with, or I decide to "try out" some
 TF> interesting piece of software, and sure enough the system decides that
 TF> it's had enough... :-)   Or there's a power failure, like yesterday
 TF> afternoon...

reboot Sat, 27-Sep-1997 01:11:59
reboot Sat, 27-Sep-1997 01:21:37
reboot Sat, 27-Sep-1997 01:45:56
reboot Sat, 27-Sep-1997 01:52:48
reboot Sun, 28-Sep-1997 20:17:40
reboot Sun, 28-Sep-1997 22:24:29
reboot Mon, 29-Sep-1997 16:02:05
reboot Tue, 30-Sep-1997 00:11:10
reboot Tue, 30-Sep-1997 22:07:59
reboot Wed, 01-Oct-1997 10:31:38
reboot Wed, 01-Oct-1997 12:15:09
reboot Wed, 01-Oct-1997 12:44:42
reboot Wed, 01-Oct-1997 13:03:45
reboot Wed, 01-Oct-1997 13:36:34
reboot Wed, 01-Oct-1997 20:10:50
reboot Thu, 02-Oct-1997 03:56:14  ** AUTOMATIC **

You can see how often mine crashes. The last one it did all by itself, I
have a prog that beeps on reboot and tells me to press a key within 10
seconds if it was me that rebooted it due to it locking up. Otherwise, it's
logged as automatic.

 RC>> It would be good if I could move the fido mailer (and thus the
 RC>> modem) over to the unix box, so then I didn't have to worry about
 RC>> the DOS box taking out users. Unfortunately I think that to use a
 RC>> fido mailer on the unix box, I'll also need to use a unix tosser
 RC>> etc. I'm not sure that I want to fiddle that much with a)
 RC>> something that already works b) something that I'm not really too
 RC>> interested in fiddling with.

 TF> Hmm, well I can't see why you'd need a unix tosser - you could move
 TF> the inbound/outbound mail packets to/from the unix machine using FTP &
 TF> KA9Q or something, my stumbling block (as I see it at the moment) is
 TF> no knowledge of a unix mailer...

I'm not entirely sure, but from memory ifmail is integrated. I don't know
if you can use just the mailer part and/or interface it with something else
via FTP.

 RC>> Depends what you do. :) In the long run a permanent link, if you
 RC>> can afford the relatively steep install, could be the go. What
 RC>> about a cable modem?

 TF> I wish...   no, I dont have the $$$ for a regular dialup link, and I
 TF> kind of think that a cable modem would end up costing more than it's
 TF> worth.  I really only want to provide a solution other than people
 TF> just plugging into the wall socket and dialling, (as it happens now)
 TF> basically so that if people want to do their browsing etc, they just
 TF> plug into the ethernet (which each computer can do since they all have
 TF> ethernet adaptors) and send a request..  the system then dials in etc
 TF> for them, assuming it's not currently connected.   Even a "decent"
 TF> modem serving system might be the go, I just havn't found anything
 TF> that'll do that yet.

ppp (user level ppp, as opposed to pppd) can do dial on demand. You could
probably also knock up some sort of script to kick up pppd if a packet
arrives to be routed to the outside world.

If you have a couple of workstations or more then it's probably worth
setting up a HTTP/FTP cache like Squid, plus named to cache DNS queries.

Cheers.


... rowan{at}sensation.net.au  |  http://www.rowan.sensation.net.au/
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