[geeks] NAT and Filtering on Solaris

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Mon, 1 Apr 2002, Brian Hechinger wrote:

> > It's IDE.  Blowing/sucking is inherent, except for the pricetag (ie: you
> > get what you pay for).  
> 
> U5/10 IDE is even worse than normal.

It's reliable enough for burns and the modest amont of load I put on it,
so I'm happy.  But yeah, isn't the Darwin's IDE controller that awful
CMD640?

> > But, apart from, that, it's a fine machine.  Quite
> > easily the nicest SPARC I've ever owned.
> 
> toss a SCSI card in it and your opinion of it will go way up. :)

Done that.  I don't have anything of any value to plug into it.  Right
now, my favorite feature of the U10 is that it's just about silent,
especilly next to the Octane, the I2, and the I2's disc box.

> i'm assuming you run it headless, since the video it comes with is quite
> lackluster (especially for an SGI nut like you)

I'm running it headless until I can afford Elite3D. :)

Really, though, the onboard video isn't that bad.  Except for the framebuffer
size, it murders CG6/CG3, which is what I've used on every other SPARC.

> other than those two things, not a bad machine.  ultra2 is still my favorite
> "low end" sun though.

U2 isn't really low-end, is it?  Granted, they're sbus, but there's a lot
of muscle-potential in a U2, especially for a deep-dish pizza box.

> > Actually, from what I'm seeing, it'll actually be cheaper to pick up a SS5
> > or an SS2+Weitek and drop in an sbus Ethernet card than to buy another hme
> > for the U10.  Anyone have any (of either) they're willing to get rid of
> > for fairly cheap? [1]
> 
> i don't have any spare stuff in that range for you unfortunately, but isn't
> there a non-Sun ethernet card he could use?  obviously 100Mbit isn't needed

All the gurus I've asked have told me that the non-hme FastEthernet
drivers are only available in Solaris/x86.  This means I either get hme,
or I find a third-party card by a company that writes their own SunOS
drivers.  Maybe I'm just paranoid, but putting non-Sun cards in a Sun box
makes me feel icky.

> since his internet can't even go 10Mbit (unless he got a T3 installed or
> something, heh)

I wish.

> those network appliance boxes are nice and easy, but i don't feel comfortable
> using them.  i'd rather had a sun or a cisco doing the job.

Seconded.  "Easy" isn't what I'm going for.  Neither is "obtusely
difficult", but I'll take "interesting" and/or "hackable" over "easy" in a
heartbeat.  This, of course, is the primary difference between the stuff at home
and the stuff I deploy at work. :)

Hmm.  A ciscoSystems 2600-series can do NAT, right?  And there do exist
Ethernet modules that plug into the modular bays, right?  Heh...hehheh...

--Jonathan