Hi Charles,

On Mon, Oct 23, 2006 at 03:09:46PM +0100, Charles Trevor wrote:
> My question to the list is, if it turns out my fears are right, what is 
> the must cost effective way of getting 100mbit ish between LAN and DMZ? 
> I'm happy to buy a new 1u box if needs be, but would rather avoid the 
> expense if possible. Policy dictates new kit only, and I would tend to 
> buy HP DLs through inclination so I cant buy a no-name pc from ebay. I 
> wondered whether one of the bigger embedded systems, like one of the 
> mini ITX systems from VIA as sold by www.linitx.co.uk would do?

I've done some minor testing of VIA hardware (PD and CL mainboards; newer boards
like the EK boards should be substantially faster), and have found that, for
simple routing and packet filtering on a 100Mbps network, the speed is
effectively capped at the max ethernet wire speed.  I measured approximately
85Mbps bi-directional throughput.

The company I work for sells pre-built firewalls based on this hardware, with
m0n0wall installed prior to ship:

http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info.php/cPath/73/products_id/614

We use one of our own firewalls internally, as well, and have been very happy
with the performance we've seen (although our network demands are not as high
as the ones that you've mentioned).

Hope you don't mind the plug.

-Forest
-- 
Forest Bond
Computer Engineer
Logic Supply, Inc.
Phone: (802) 244-8302
Fax: (802) 244-7938
forest dot bond at logicsupply dot com
www.logicsupply.com