217 lines
5.2 KiB
HTML
217 lines
5.2 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
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<HTML
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><HEAD
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><TITLE
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>How and where to deploy</TITLE
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>Linksys Blue Box Router HOWTO</TH
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><A
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NAME="howandwhen"
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></A
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>2. How and where to deploy</H1
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><P
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>The Linksys BEFSR41, BEFW11, WRT54G and their siblings are designed
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to be used as gateway boxes on a home Ethernet. Typically, you'll hook one
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up to a DSL or cable modem, which will automatically switch into bridge
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mode and simply pass packets between your ISP's router and the Linksys box.
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</P
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><P
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>If you want to use a general-purpose PC running Linux as a firewall,
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have fun — but these little boxes are more efficient. The nicest
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thing about them is that they run out of firmware and, assuming you take
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the elementary precautions we describe, are too stupid to be cracked.
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Also, they don't generate fan noise or heat. Finally, they run Linux
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inside and can be customized and hacked in useful ways.</P
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><P
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>Linksys boxes used to have a good reputation for reliability.
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Something bad happened to their quality control after Cisco acquired the
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company in March 2003; I had two go silently dead on me in less than a
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year, and I heard grumbling from others about similar problems.
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Unfortunately when I tried other low-end brands (Belkin, Buffalo) they
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proved to have gross design errors. The Belkin had brain-damage in its
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firewall rules that interfered with local SMTP, and the Buffalo
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intermittently refused connections for no apparent reason. So I went back
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with Linksys, hoping my WRT54G wouldn't turn into a doorstop within a couple
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of months. As of mid-2006, I've been OK for about 24 months.</P
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><P
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>(Building one of these puppies is not rocket science. I can only
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conjecture that the competitive pressure is driving the manufacturers to cut
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costs to the bone by hiring programmers out of the bottom of the barrel
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and having the manufacturing done by some low-end contract house
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in Indonesia or somewhere. The results, alas, tend to be unstable
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crap. Caveat emptor.)</P
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><P
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>Note another consequence of the Cisco acquisition: Linksys is now
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what marketers call a flank guard, a low-end brand designed to protect the
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margins and brand image of Cisco's commercial-grade networking products.
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This means that Linksys boxes are no longer acquiring new firmware
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features, and some old ones like stateful packet inspection almost
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certainly won't be coming back. Provided you can live within these limits,
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this is actually good; simpler firmware is more stable firmware. And, in
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any case, the open-source replacement firnwares can give you back the
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features abd complexity if you want them.</P
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><P
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>At minimum, a live Linksys box will do the following things for
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you:</P
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><P
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></P
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><OL
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TYPE="1"
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><LI
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><P
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><EM
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>Act as an Ethernet router.</EM
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> You can
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plug all your lines and hubs and hosts into it to exchange packets even
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when your outside link is down.</P
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></LI
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><LI
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><P
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><EM
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>Act as a smart gateway.</EM
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> When you
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configure the Linksys with a public static IP address (or tell it to grab a
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dynamic IP address from your ISP at startup time), it will gateway between
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hosts on your private network and the Internet, performing all the IP
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masquerading and address translation required to route your traffic.</P
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></LI
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><LI
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><P
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><EM
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>Firewall your connection.</EM
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> You can
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tell it to block out all but the minimum sevice channels you need. You can
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specify separately, for each service, to which of your internal machines
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the traffic should be routed.</P
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></LI
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></OL
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><P
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>I give my Linksys box the standard private-network gateway
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address, 192.168.1.1. I then give all my boxes 192.168.1.x addresses
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and tell them the Linksys is their gateway. Everything works.</P
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></DIV
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HREF="introduction.html"
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>Prev</A
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HREF="lostmanual.html"
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>Next</A
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></TR
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><TR
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><TD
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WIDTH="33%"
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ALIGN="left"
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>Introduction</TD
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><TD
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VALIGN="top"
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> </TD
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WIDTH="33%"
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VALIGN="top"
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>Lost the manual?</TD
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