DSL internet access

[rkmorrow]

At my company, one of the guys wants to use a Linksys 4 port router and a DSL line for the company's internet access. There will be anywhere from 100-150 people accessing the web heavy duty.
The way the DSL line is set up, it only gives you 1 valid address, which means PAT on the router.
This router(according to the documentation)can handle up to 255 connections, with up to 70 VPN "tunnels" and do DHCP.
The router sells for $129.
This all seems too good to be true to me, it seems that with all that it will be doing, it will be a HEAVY load on that little dinky router.
I am thinking it is going to be too much for it to handle.
We have a PIX firewall that isnt in service that we could use to do this.
Does anyone have any ideas as to the reality of this?
Is it a good way to do the internet connectivity?
Are there any potential problems?

Thanks for any input,
rkmorrow

 

[yizhar]

HI.

For such a company I think that a faster and more reliable line is needed (Leased T1 fraction?), and more then a single registered ip address - this might be needed for some applications that have problems through PAT and for mapping to internal servers.

I don't know much about the Linksys device but you should check its firewall capabilities also and if not good enough then better use the pix.

Bye
Yizhar Hurwitz

http://come.to/yizhar

http://teachers.sivan.co.il/yizhar

 

[wybnormal]

You are joking?? run a real company off a piece of junk that is marginal for the home user? Let him do it.. he will learn a hard lesson about being too cheap for his own good.. or the lesson of pushing against management when you know they are completely wrong about something.

This *router* is oversold by the marketing dweebs at Linksys. I like it ok.. I've used them and own one myself. But with that said, it was marginal at best. The outbound is not so bad but inbound performance sucked to put it mildly. I bought a used Webramp and it's 100% better from both ends.

Ideally you would have 2 items.. 1 router to perform the default gateway functions and keep the LAN traffic where it belongs. Then a Sonicwall/PIX to be the firewall and do only that. You pick up two levels of protection and each does what it does best.. route or firewall.

Get a real firewall.. something like a PIX 506 or a SonicWall SOHO or TELE3 depending on your needs.

Both can be had for about 1500 depending on the needs. The SOHOs and TELE3s are cheaper.. running about 400 to 700. The faster/bigger/better Sonicwall is 1500.. same as the PIX.

MikeS Find me at

http://www.packetattack.com

"The trouble with giving up civil rights is that you never get them back"

 

[Hungster]

I bought 4 of those mikey mouse dinky router, it was so bad i have to return them all

please do yourself a favour, get a real router from Cisco
because for 100 to 150 will not cut it
you will find that router will choke on 10 to 15 people, the PPPoE part was garbage.

a single dsl will not be enough for 150 heavy users, it will end up slower than just giving each person a modem and have them all dial individually to the net

Hung

 

[wybnormal]

So far as the single DSL.. it's a question of bandwidth. I ran 3,000 nodes of web traffic off a single T1.. with limits like no real audio, no chat etc.. Worked just fine.. most web traffic is very small in the grand scheme of things.. it's all the bells and whisles that get you into trouble.

DO yourself a favor and right away block things like games, game ports, internet chat, web mail, audio streaming of any kind..

The pix can do this and a normal router can do it to a lesser degree but still be very effective.

MikeS Find me at

http://www.packetattack.com

"The trouble with giving up civil rights is that you never get them back"