openbsd as a router

[spaceagebachel0r]

hi everyone I'm new to this forum and to the world of networking. I can setup a computer or server on a network given all the information, but I'm not a network specialist. I need to setup an openbsd router to connect 3 physical networks. In another job I knew of someone that did this using gated, but the gated project has been desolved and is no longer freely available. I've been looking into MRTd. But for some reason it seems to me that all we should need is a bridge and not a router. I've also read on creating just static routes on the the openbsd box. The openbsd box has a 4 port NIC in it and another single port NIC that will uplink to the rest of the network. Again, pardon my ignorance but I've yet to find a good networking tutorial that will help me understand how all this network stuff works, let alone set it up in OpenBSD. I have an OpenBSD firewall setup at home, that was pretty easy using PF. Also, if you recomend buying an inexpensive router for this application other than having an openbsd box do the routing, I'm open to those suggestions. I really appreciate any guidance or information you can offer. Thanks.

 

[segment]

You would probably want to run Zebra on your machine. As for "all in one" tutorials on networking, good luck. Zebra will do the job your looking for and since it is OpenSource you won't be paying for it. The CLI is easy to use, and it is very functional, stable. Make sure your equipment is so too.

 

[buraglio]

I think you'll really only need zebra if you're running a routing protocol (I believe Quagga is prefered over zebra anyhow, and openbsd now has many routing protocols like bgpd and ospfd built in).
You *should* be able to use pf to do a lot of your data direction using the route-to flags (although it's been a while since I've done it).
My questions would be:
What kind of connectivity are you looking to do? Route? Bridge?
Is there any kind of filtering that needs to be done? NAT?
Would a commercial router like a Cisco 1700 series with a 4 port ethernet WIC be easier to support since you seem to be relatively new to doing it on a "PC router"?
Personally I always like to consider my time as money. If it's going to be a nightmare to support something and take away my time on weekends/evenings I usually consider the extra expendature of funds to buy more applicable equipment up front.

I know, not a sexy solution, but it's honest.

nb

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Nicholas D. Buraglio

http://www.buraglio.com/nick/gpg-pub-key.txt