On Sun, Jan 25, 2004 at 07:14:12AM +1000, Hilton Travis wrote:
> Nope, it wouldn't.  Adding extra functionality to a firewall is like
> asking that your toaster also boil the kettle.  It is just not designed
> for that.
> 
> Adding NTP will then have people asking for ident, then eventually
> Samba.  Believe me, I've seen this happen before.  :)

What I think a lot of these requests are expressing is a need for
either:

  a) A mono<foo> that's not designed to be a firewall, but that is 
     designed to provide these sorts of 'small' services for smallish
     networks.

        NTP
	DNS
	WINS
	Authentication

     and so on, or

  b) A plugin framework that lets people write these things themselves,
     safe in the knowledge that the next update isn't going to stomp
     all over them.

N
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