[Suns-at-Home] Building new server

[wes@kingston.net]

> I just got my hands on a pair or Sunfire V100 servers and plan to use
> one to replace my trusty old SS20 that has been my mail/web/ftp server
> as well as my firewall/NAT router. The other V100 will be a spare which
> is what I have now with an extra SS20 in case or a major failure. Back
> when I set up the SS20 (circa 1998) that was the only way for me to have
> a NAT capable router for a reasonable cost. When the plethora of low
> cost DSL / cable switch/routers came on the market, I kept the SS20 in
> place instead of using one of those. Now that I finally plan to upgrade,
> I am looking for some advice on whether I should use the V100 as a
> firewall or use my Linksys 4 port wireless switch/router for that. My
> question to the group is whether the port forwarding on typical routers
> will allow a server on the internal network to work as it does now. I
> need the server for the services above except the firewall/router.

Personally, I -hate- those little Linksys routers and so forth, as they
always seem to yield wierd problems... especially with heavy-traffic
servers.

At work, where functionality rules (we're thrifty, but not cheap), we run
Linux  firewalls using solutions developed around iptables and whatnot...
and we run them on Sun/Opteron hardware (X2100s). In my experience,
nothing is quite as flexible or adaptable as iptables from a
packet-filtering point of view.

I see no reason why you couldn't do the same thing with your V100s,
although if you want to run Solaris, you'll have to ipfw (which I'm not
all that keen on, but obviously works for you already on the SS20s)