From: "Fred Weston" <fweston at gmail dot com>

> I used to use m0n0 quite extensively a few years ago but haven't used
> it recently.  I was wondering what the minimum recommended system
> would be to ensure that adding m0n0 in between my LAN and the Internet
> will not adversely affect throughput or latency.  A friend of mine is
> running m0n0 at home with 5mbit cable and notices that his speed
> diminishes an average of 1-1.5mbit when using m0n0 vs directly
> connecting to the cable modem.  He is running a PII 266MHz with 64MB
> RAM.  This is what has kept me away from using m0n0, but I am in need
> of an inexpensive VPN solution, so thought I'd ask if this is typical
> results from using older hardware or perhaps just something screwy
> with his config.

What load and other hardware?  For example, VPN takes some horsepower. 
Traffic shaping takes some power, and a bunch of ram.  Cheap nics offload 
all of the work onto the CPU.  IRQ conflicts kill speed...  That said, I 
have some very heavy load applications on duel T1 connections hammering away 
at wire speed using P2 450s 3com nics, and 128 meg of ram.  I also have a 
BUNCH (20 or so) of newer systems with 800mhz Durons 256 meg (for future 
growth) and realtek nics.

                        Lee