* Stephen Walsh writes to Rowan_Crowe, on Friday October 31 1997
   at 17:14:

 SW>>> Thanks for all the help and info you've given me. The freebsd
 SW>>> system is now starting to take shape...

 R>> Goodo. :)

 SW> makes you feal all warm and fuzzy now, does'nt it?? (Comeon, i know
 SW> you do)

I'm a sysadmin... I have no feelings

:)

 SW>>> Installed and configured (except for the errors about no DNS!),
 SW>>> now I have to get my head around named and it's (messy) config
 SW>>> file...

 R>> Is it the standard named supplied with 2.2.2R? You shouldn't need
 R>> to configure anything, apart from enabling it in /etc/rc.conf.
 R>> As-is that should provide basic DNS caching services. That's
 R>> unless you want to do something funky like host your primary DNS,
 R>> which is a lot more fun.

 SW> I want to do the 'lot more fun' stuff %-)  The network setup here will
 SW> have about 4 machines on the network. os's will be win95 and
 SW> os/2. Will running the freebsd machine (486-dx4/100 with 32mb ram) as
 SW> a router/dns server/cache/email server (the last one might not be on
 SW> the bsd machine, duno yet) be to taking for it?

Yep, it will easily handle all that and will also run a news server on top of that.

The school client I set up a month ago has a similar powered machine for
their server and that services a network of 10 Windoze machines: router,
DNS, HTTP/FTP proxy, news, DHCP, email, WWW server etc. There are times
when all 10 machines are accessing it at once, it's never shown signs of
strain.

 SW>>> Btw: I'll be getting the 24hr connection in the next two weeks.
 SW>>> Things are starting to lookup for a change...

 R>> Are you getting a single IP or a set of them? Is it flat rate or
 R>> volume charged?

 SW> 16 ip numbers are being alocated (yay). charges are flat rate (andrew
 SW> [the guy that run's qonline] has'nt said anything about volume
 SW> charges, just a monthly fee of $170....

$170 is pretty good! Well, of course that depends on what do...for my
*personal* usage, volume charging is quite a bit cheaper (19c/Mb inbound
only). I'd probably do about 120Mb per month which only $20 in traffic
charges.

A 33.6k flat rate link through Telstra will cost you $350 per month, but
you're connected to their backbone (ie in Melbourne a 33.6k port is
indirectly connected to the 43(?)Mbit/sec mel-syd link) and you will be
able to saturate your link consistently without having to fight with others
for the shared bandwidth of a smaller link...

Again, it really depends on your usage. I'll be getting myself a dedicated
33.6k Telstra link in the near future in addition to the 128k ISDN, because
I know I can use it to shove through more than $350 worth of traffic per
month. :) (FWIW: unlimited traffic flat rate 64k ISDN is $990 per month,
then 128k is $2,100 for 40% or lower utilisation)

Cheers.


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