home network planning with all-linux questions

[Chris G]

On Sat, Nov 17, 2007 at 06:30:05PM +1030, Tim wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-11-17 at 01:31 -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
> > In three months, you've paid for the router with what you didn't spend
> > on the power bill, and after that you're keeping $17.50 in your pocket
> > every month. $210 in your hand every year isn't bad....
> > 
> > Now... are you sure you can't afford a router? 
> 
> There's plenty of advantages in using a router (small, reliable, quick
> to get going, easy to connect more than two devices to the one box,
> etc.).  But I can see one common disadvantage - they're less
> programmable than using a computer.  If you want special rules, you
> might be out of luck.  If you want to create port-forwarding rules,
> you've got limited options, and you may be only able to specify a few
> ports to forward.  Mine lets me specify only 8, which isn't really
> enough if you have to forward a few ports to one PC for some particular
> protocol, then want to do the same for some other PCs.  Mine doesn't
> even let me set UDP or TCP rules, it's just port numbers.
> 
My Speedtouch does just about anything you want plus more, the CLI
access lets you tune just about *anything* if you're willing to try.

It's a Speedtouch 716 (which has VOIP as well) and was *very* cheap.

-- 
Chris Green