What to do with new spare computer?

I will soon have another computer to add to my network, built from spare parts lying around. The specs:

Athlon XP 2400+ (locked)
Asus A7A266
512MB PC2700 RAM (if it's not dead)
SiS 8MB video card
40 GB ATA hard drive
Raidmax case with window (not a lot of drive space)
Power supply still to be determined

It will, like all my other computers, run Gentoo. What can I purpose it towards? It will of course add to my distcc cluster, and it will fold, but beside that, what can I make it do to service me? I already have a nice big fileserver, and a remote IRC/SILC/mail server (I might delegate services from that one). I might decide to make this computer a dedicated router, in addition to internal services, and make my file server purely internal (right now it's the router). Any ideas?

> a squid proxy server for your LAN
> mp3 server for your LAN (running Samba to service Windows pc's)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
my Suse box provides the above

other possible services internal/external
>ftp server
>web server

Ah, squid proxy, that's a good idea. I don't think I'd do an MP3 server, just because my best speakers are on my main computing table, and I use my Mac and iTunes to play them (not to mention my fileserver could serve that purpose better, what with all its drive space).

I should list the services my network already has/provides:

Web server (See below)
FTP server
Gentoo router
CVS
IRC
SILC
IMAP/SMTP
distccd
NFS
SSH everywhichway
Samba not needed, because I only ever run Windows when I play games, and I have little use to transfer files around to that instance.

About the web server: when I move in two months to my new apartment, out of the dorms, I'll lose my extremely fast internet connection, and go to 5Mbps/278Kbps Cox cable. Unfortunately, Cox blocks port 80, so I can't host a webserver on the standard port. I was thinking of getting around it by having my remote server (on a Comcast cable connection with no port restrictions) take port 80 web requests, and forward the client to my real webserver on a different port. Is that a good solution, or is there something better?

run Debian

Smoothwall /thread

No but really. Tons of beni's to a Smoothy.
>Bulletproof Firewall with endless config options (Green=Local/Red=Net/Orange=DMZ)
>DHCP / router

Get that bad boy folding for team 32!!

Thats what I did with my old pc, it folds 24/7

Having a pure router is always good if possible, no matter which distro, gentoo or smoothwall

Definitely should fold. Even if it's a smoothwall router or has other purposes, don't waste the cycles. make it fold if you plan to have it on. it's plenty powerful enough.

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Do something worthwhile with it.

I've got a slightly older machine than yours sitting next to my main rig, folding 24/7. It's my windows box, because sometimes every now and then you want to run a windows prog that doesn't run in linux. I don't really keep anything worthwhile on it, just software to play music and load up my mp3 player. I mostly use it for playing mp3's off my server in the basement. The comp is hooked up to my nice surround speakers so I can be playing a game on my main rig and still be listening to nice high quality music.

...Or, considering you seem to have plenty of machines, you could sell it. A bit of cash in your pocket is always a nice trade for something you don't/can't use.

Okay, I get the point, I should fold. I was going to do that anyway.

This computer will probably be my future router with Gentoo, which can do everything that smoothwall can. Turns out the room I'll have is a little smaller than I thought it was, so I'll probably stash this one headless in a corner or closet, and choose another computer to connect to my large monitor and do TV.

Restorer said:

About the web server: when I move in two months to my new apartment, out of the dorms, I'll lose my extremely fast internet connection, and go to 5Mbps/278Kbps Cox cable. Unfortunately, Cox blocks port 80, so I can't host a webserver on the standard port. I was thinking of getting around it by having my remote server (on a Comcast cable connection with no port restrictions) take port 80 web requests, and forward the client to my real webserver on a different port. Is that a good solution, or is there something better?

Click to expand...

Seems to be a pretty good idea. Webhosting is going to be rather poor on that speed, dependent on how much transfer you do.

I'm curious... I know very little about networking really... Why do you use a computer as a router instead of a hardware router?

Generally faster, more intelligable response. Moreover the routing software is typically imbedded with a firewall proggy/dhcp/proxy etc..

Is there really THAT big of a difference in speed between a hardware router and a computer acting as a router? Seems to me like the dedicated piece of hardware would work better than a comp with a bunch of network cards

Let's put it this way: a Linux PC as a router never ever goes belly up just because someone in the LAN runs bittorrent or any other P2P app. hardware routers regularly then make browsing for others in the LAN impossible or just crash due to overheating.

And lately there was a topic in the networking forum where they showed what throughput a few of the popular choices for hardware routers/switches have. None of them came even near to the theoretical maximum.

And have you seen any (consumer) router which does high end stuff like layer7 filtering and shaping. And neither do they have a real stateful firewall. All these things can be done with a 486/P5 and 32MB of RAM very easily.

And have you seen any (consumer) router which does high end stuff like layer7 filtering and shaping.

Click to expand...

Since I don't even know what those are, I guess it wouldn't benefit me much. =p

I'm sure you would benefit from traffic shaping. Windows users know this sometimes as QoS. L7 filtering means you can identify what kind of protocol runs without looking at ports and then shape accordingly. E.g. you could give P2P traffic a lower priority no matter on which port it runs.

I have no idea what any of that meant either. =p

MRD said:

I have no idea what any of that meant either. =p

Click to expand...

Well take a popular example, Voice over IP. In order for the VoIP portion to stutter you need Quality of Service. QoS give a protocol priority over other traffic. So VoIP would get all the bandwidth it needs while other traffic would be scaled back.

I personally run a self-built router running on Gentoo. I prefer it to the hardware routers and other prepackaged router software because i have more control over it. I apply the exact iptables rules and such. It's not a nice web interface but if I get tired of it then it's not too hard to make my own.

-DarkArctic