The FP Room is back up!!!

[Bill Vermillion]

On Mon, Feb 21 22:58 , while impersonating an expert on the internet, 
John Esak sent this to stdout: 


[stuff deleted .. wjv]

> Well, no... too bad. I liked the character based menus of my
> old Netopias, but the Sonic Wall routers we have all require
> browsers. They are flexible as hell though... and with a
> Multitech "RasFinder" we are able to have dialup-modem fail
> over and fail back to our T1's.

A device you might want to look at if you haven't is
the RAD Webranger II.

It is a router, firewall, and had a built-in CSU/DSU, and all sorts
of other options.

One that is quite handy is the drop-add function.

I have one client that access the 'net from their local office 
over RoadRunner.

They also needed 3 digit telephone extensions for an office about
80 miles away.  So with the drop-add and a second T1 the remote
office connected their telco device to one port, and then 
a local switch to the other section and the device was set up 
as a bridge.

Since these were set up as brdiges between the two offices the
PC's and/or printers could bet set up and tested in the main office
and then just picked up and plugged in at the far site with no
changes.

Since there were only 5 lines plus a signal line being used for
phones, all the other channels were bonded so the far office
accessed the 'net through the main office.  Only 4 users there
and the 700Kbit bandwidth leftover was more than enough.

Another plus is that the far office did not have to have internet
connections.  Given the price of the devices - in two years
they would have totally paid for themselves as the far office
did not have to have internet services there.

Since it was bridged the connetiosn to the far office was under
10ms so it made running VNC frmo the main office painless as there
were no network delays involved.

RAD is made in Israel and has been very strong in firewalls,
routers, bonding devices, etc, but has a low visibility level
in the commodity PC market.

Having everthing - including the two CSU/DSU's in box that is about
the size of a standard external CSU/DSU is also a plus.


Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com