On 11/8/07, Carl Karsten <carl@personnelware.com> wrote:
I do the networking in my house, and hang out with guys that do networking in small offices that have a few T1s. Now I am talking to people about a DS3 connection for 500 laptops*, and I am bing told "a p4 linux box with 2 nics doing NAT will not be able to handle the load." I am not really qualified to say one way or the other. I bet someone here is.
how about just looking at what a production MSSP would roll out for a similar situation.. a nokia ip530-class box (I think it's a ip580 these days) with Checkpoint as the 'firewall'... Certainly (poke fbsd fanboys) a fbsd box of similar config can perform as well, yes? :) I recall the ip530 being an intel P3-ish system (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=nokia+ip530&btnG=Google+Search) I think we selected these at a past job because it could handle 2 quad FE cards and a DS3 card...