D-Link firewall with Linux

[Jerry Feldman]

On Thu, 27 Mar 2003 08:31:35 -0500 (EST)
Rich Braun <richb at pioneer.ci.net> wrote:

> After years of running Linux as my firewall (reasonably happily, aside
> from an occasional crash caused by a defective tape drive), I decided
> to buy one of those cheapo firewall boxes.  Candidates were the
> Linksys BEFSX41 and the D-Link DI-604 (as per the current PC Magazine
> reviews).  The Linksys went back to Microcenter yesterday, after about
> 3 hours of service--it wouldn't stay up for more than an hour at a
> time, before going into a repeated software-reboot cycle.
> 
> Bring on the D-Link.  It costs less and runs solid but I have an issue
> similar to one raised by someone last October (google for 'named
> di-604' in newsgroups).  My caching DNS server gets a whole lot of
> lame-server errors and timeouts when I set it up behind this NAT box.
> There isn't enough debugging capability in the router for me to figure
> this one out.  I'm running 2.18 firmware, which has one other odd bug:
> its system time reports wild values, whether NTP is turned on or not.
> 
> The DNS errors did not happen with the Linksys, so I'm pretty sure
> it's not a problem in the Linux config.
> 
> Has anyone experimented with these broadband-router firewall boxes?
> 
> Oh, and lest anyone else get suckered in by Linksys' marketing hype: 
> their firewall firmware is available ONLY in the BEFSX41 unit. 
> Packaging for various other products hints that it's included but it
> isn't.
I have a Linksys BEFW11S4 and previously I had a BEFSR41. Both boxes
came up and worked with absolutely no problem. Several of the people I
worked with at HP had the same boxes. JABR also has the BEFW11S4. 

The Linksys BEFSX41 box also serves as a VPN endpoint. The D-LINK box
you have appears to be the equivalent to the BEFSR41. In any case, I
found that the Linksys boxes were significantly cheaper by mail order. 
The BEFSR41 should be available for under $50. 
-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
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