486 66mhz 16M ram - Enough for 3 workstations/cable modem?

[crazyox]

Hey everyone. I'm thinking about buying a complete system for $49. It includes a 500 meg harddrive, 486 DX66mhz Processor, 1 meg video card, 16 megs of ram, a floppy drive, mobo, and case. Would this system be enough to act as a firewall/internet router for 3 computers? Only 1 system would really be using the internet at a time, maximum of 2 with the other just doing casual internet browsing/email reading. Would the internet bandwidth/game pings be reduced with this low of a system? I have a cable modem, and want to effectively use 100% of the available bandwidth. Just wondering if this system would fit the bill without degrading internet speed. Your comments? Oh, I also have a Pentium 2 233mhz with a 4 gig harddrive and 64 megs of ram. I currently own it, and I was counting it as one of the 3 that the 486 would serve too. I might be able to use this system instead of buying the cheap one, since my dad is getting a new system. Then we'd have 2 systems on the network, and the router. Would a PII 233 w/ 64 megs of ram be an overkill for 2 computers? Would a 486 w/ 16 megs of ram be an underkill for 2 to 3 computers? I'm, of course, just going to put a low-size version of Linux on the router.

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I Will Layeth the Smacketh Down on Those Who Lack Testicular Fortitude.
Can you smell what crazyox is cookin'?

[crokett]

The 486 would be perfect for a firewall. I have a 486 that I hope to be running a firewall on by the end of the week. I know a guy who has a 386 running as a firewall.
The p2 would be ok as a firewall, but it would be even better as a workstation. why waste that much computer for just a firewall?

[crokett]

Forgot one more thing: as far as "internet speed" goes: if your cable company is like mine, you got a 10 megabit ethernet card with the cable modem. Best speed I have seen from my modem is a lot less than 10 meg - somewhere just over a 1 meg. your 486 won't slow you down.

[drbugs]

A freind has a similier setup, with two 10mbit ethernet nics. The machine has no probs keeping up. Just make sure you disable most of your services! Check out the trinity O/S doc. Good procedures for securing linux at multiple layers.

http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~dranch/

Good luck!

[crazyox]

Thanks guys.

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I Will Layeth the Smacketh Down on Those Who Lack Testicular Fortitude.
Can you smell what crazyox is cookin'?

[Kurt]

There are 8 bits to a byte, you would never even hope to see 10 MByte transfer from that modem- just about as you said, closer to 1.25 MByte/sec.

Originally posted by crokett:
Forgot one more thing: as far as "internet speed" goes: if your cable company is like mine, you got a 10 megabit ethernet card with the cable modem. Best speed I have seen from my modem is a lot less than 10 meg - somewhere just over a 1 meg. your 486 won't slow you down.

[nanode]

I started off w/ a 166 in my linux box, which was a firewall, web server etc. etc.
Very soon I became addicted and began doing a lot of compiling etc etc.

So, Now I just have 1 box doing everything. I upgraded the mobo and CPU to AMDk6III/400.

That and 128Mb ram, handles:
firewall
apache server
ftp
samba
And a fully loaded workstation that plays mp3s, compiles java and plays games.

When I started, a 166 was more than enough for the routing.

[hyPER_MaN]

I have a p133 running slackware 7

ftp
apache server
firewall/router
file server

and it sit's there doing basicly nothing unless i decide to compile somthing! :0

[BigBlockMopar]

Yeah, I expect you'll have no problems.

My first attempt at installing Linux was RedHat 6.0 (buggy) on a 486DX2-66 with VESA local bus.

Not only was I stuck with the usual LI LILO crash with that era of hardware, the machine would also crash during startup as it attempted to probe for PCMCIA devices. In a VLB 486 desktop.

I was very irritated by the whole thing and almost gave up on Linux.

Therefore, from my experience, a 486 will run Linux, but as a new user, I had a hell of a time with it.

As a firewall, though, I have seen a 386 with two network cards, 16 megs of RAM and Linux saturate 10base-T ethernet. Your cable connection isn't capable of that speed - at best, it's capable of half that - so don't worry about it. If a 386 will do that, your 486 is more than up to the task.

I administer two Linux servers now, one at home and one at work. The one at work is a Pentium 100 with 64 megs of RAM and it serves a 17 node LAN for mail and stuff. It's also a webserver and our gateway to the Internet. During a fairly busy morning, top will report that pppoe draws the most CPU cycles (after top, that is). pppoe is the Roaring Penguin PPPoE solution that drives our DSL connection. Usually, the CPU runs about 90% free.

My home machine runs a Pentium 133 with 32 megs of RAM. It, too, is connected to the 'net through DSL, and runs as a webserver, mail server, gateway, etc. for 5 separate clients on my home LAN. Again, the biggest load on the CPU when I run top - is top! http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif

In fact, both my Linux servers run SETI@Home's Linux/UNIX client at all times, so that their unspent CPU cycles are at least for a good cause. Since SETI runs in Nice mode, if my webservers get Slashdotted, SETI moves to the background, and I haven't been able to detect any performance penalty from running it.

And, if you're getting a 486 for the task, give special preference to one of the later ones with PCI slots. VESA local bus and ISA are both hard to probe properly. Make sure you avoid anything that takes only 30 pin SIMMs.