dummynet

[Micheal Patterson]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <TM4525 at aol.com>
To: <james at tunasafedolphin.org>
Cc: <questions at freebsd.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2004 3:58 PM
Subject: Re: dummynet


> In a message dated 10/28/04 12:52:14 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> james at tunasafedolphin.org writes:
> >>Funny, I thought that's what Dummynet did.  It seems that you wouldn't
> >want to steer a user into a horribly overpriced closed-source
> >rate-limiting solutuion when it's available for free in the OS.
>
> >BTW: Nice email addr. ;)
> ----------------------------
> Ah, but its not really "available" for free, because the free ones don't
work
> well, aren't supported and don't scale. Plus it seems that unless you
> value your time at $2./hr its already cost you more than the $800. to try
to
> use the "free" stuff. Are you planning on completely rewriting it yourself
> using dummynet as the code base? What good is open source if
> the entire code base is nowhere near as good as what you can buy?
> You would really struggle with an inadequate open source solution
> rather than pay for something that works?

<snip>

>
> TM

I'm just curious to know if you're ever actually looked at the hardware
options to see what OS they function on. I think you'd be surprised to find
that many of the more popular ones, are running on some flavor of either BSD
or Linux. On the support issue, dummynet is supported by it's developer,
Luigi Rizzo and he literally begs you to contact him directly if you locate
a bug in the subsystem, need some questions answered and even offers his
support under contract if you prefer.

"3. Support
If you have found some bug, please report it to me by email, but don't
forget to include information on which version of FreeBSD and dummynet you
are using, your rules (ipfw show; ipfw pipe show), your configuration
(bridge or router) etc.
If you have a simple question, again just email me and i generally try to
reply as soon as possible. Again, please supply details!
For more complex things (like "i have no time to learn how to use it, i just
want this work done"), or customizations and additions of new features to
dummynet/ipfw, I am available (through my department) for doing support on a
contract basis.
Email luigi at iet.unipi.it for discussing details."

As far as being "nowhere as good as you can buy", take a WatchGuard Firebox
X1000 for example, they're pretty popular because they work. People that use
them always tell me they prefer them to any *Nix based solution. By that
statement, I know they've not really looked into that unit because the
developers plainly state that it runs on a Linux hardened kernel. It
terminates vpn connections, both ipsec and pptp, rate limits, nats and
firewalls. All of the very same features you can do with Linux or FreeBSD
using the appropriate packages.

--

Micheal Patterson
Senior Communications Systems Engineer
405-917-0600

Confidentiality Notice:  This e-mail message, including any attachments,
is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain
confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use,
disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended
recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all
copies of the original message.