[Rack] Fwd: [Noisebridge-discuss] Omar: Please don't "re-build" the network

[Omar Zouai]

I agree, regressions are not a good thing. My main reason to implement a
full blown server as a router is for traffic shaping and possibly image
caching. It was stated that when the network was "broken", it was
remarkably faster.

Maybe I wasn't clear enough with my idea. Doing away with the switches are
a terrible idea. We currently have 2 switches that connect almost all the
equipment.

My idea wasn't to get rid of them, but to change how they are used. The
server could be running any flavor of Linux(my choice would be either
Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, or straight up Debian. but this looks promising
http://www.zentyal.org/server/, maybe that could be up while we configure
our own version?), and DNAT could be achieved with IPtables. First, the
line from the ISP(s) would be connected to a small switch, then that switch
would in turn be plugged into the server. The server would then have 2
other NICs(one builtin, and 2 PCI), one of them would run equipment that
would be like Minotaur, the door, Pony, Stallion, Mode-S, etc. These
systems would have more upstream bandwidth allocated to them. The next
subnet would be for NoiseBridge users, they would have more downstream
bandwidth, and possibly an image cache(Squid3) to reduce network load while
surfing the web.

Then, the 2 switches would have their respective networks, and would branch
off to their clients. All the equipment except for BikeShed would still be
there.

Again, I've implemented a similar network in my home. My modem feeds
straight to my linux box, then I have it connected to a gigabit switch,
which then in turn connects to all my devices. Squid3 caches all static
images that are requested without https(haven't configured an ssl bump
yet), and serves them locally out of Apache2. DNAT is setup with IPtables,
and the only ports forwarded are to my Xbox.

This is still just my preliminary idea, there is still a lot more room for
improvement.
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