[NTLUG:Discuss] Internet Connection Sharing presentation

[Carl Haddick]

> On Jul 16, 2017, at 12:43 PM, terry <trryhend at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> See notes and comments online at:
> http://fwlug.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=7&Itemid=17
> If you have any questions, fire a way, I'll do the best I can....  Here is
> a stab at one...
> 
> I was asked the question; “Why would I be interested in letting a PC do
> router functions?” to which I did not give an adequate response. The short
> answer is that not everyone will be interested and possibly most will leave
> all such things to a router and that router might just have all the options
> we need, but there is always the chance that some of us will find a router
> lacking in some areas and may want to transfer some, if not all, router
> functions to a PC. Whether it’s a small low power machine such as a
> Raspberry PI, or an old laptop, or maybe even the desktop PC we use for
> normal day to day tasks, everyone’s wants / needs vary to one degree or
> another.

Long time lurker, here, but I feel inspired to pipe up. I agree, being able to route is important, both internally and externally. Think about hosting VM’s, for example, in different broadcast domains.

Back in the old days I managed a wireless network connecting five small towns. I didn’t have the money for fancy routers so I used PCs with multiple ethernet cards. I think one machine had six or seven ethernet interfaces.

Routing was simple and this was within my budget. But then one fine day a car dealership discovered internet radio and my poor wireless network was carrying 8 or ten streams at full quality tp one site. This was the old days. The Breezecom/Alvarion gear I used was 3 Mbps down, but remember there is a difference between true half duplex links and a half duplex system with multiple nodes. I was choked.

The answer was what remains one of my favorite features, stochastic fair queuing at my cheap Linux routers.

I had compiled my own kernels and hadn’t included that feature. I was 100 miles away the day I had to turn on SFQ, and the Linux box that needed the kernel recompile was 250 up in the top of an abandoned granary. No biggie. I recompiled the kernel, rebooted, it all came back up, the folks listening to streaming audio were happy and my other customers were running fine, too.

A good day.

Wish I could make it to your meetings, but I seem forever shackled to work out here in the middle of nowhere.

Carl