Archive for May 19th, 2010

New Firewall Didn’t Cut It

Posted in Technology on 05/19/2010 05:14 pm by Daniel Hagan

The plan for the apartment network was to have more than one internal segment so I could partition off traffic where I wanted to. But to do that requires a firewall with more than two interfaces. Your basic Linksys just isn’t going to cut it. So I recently purchased a Soekris 4501 based m0n0wall firewall on eBay. I took the time this afternoon to get it configured and run some tests.

Configuration Ping (ms) Download (Mpbs) Upload (Mbps)
m0n0wall, default configuration 20 10.42 2.82
m0n0wall, interface polling 20 10.31 2.76
Laptop wired to netgear GbE switch wired to Linksys WAP/Router * 19 30.53 2.71
Laptop wired to Linksys WAP/Router 18 30.87 2.77
Laptop wired directly to SB6120 modem 18 36.06 2.82

* This is the configuration I’ve been using lately, so the m0n0wall was hopefully going to match it for performance…

Two things are immediately obvious after these test. 1) Comcast is capping my upload speed at about 2.8 Mbps. 2) The m0n0wall firewall just isn’t going to cut it. Since the native connection (the bottom config) is pushing 36 Mpbs, it’s bad enough that the Linksys cuts me down to 30 Mbps. The features of the m0n0wall would be nice, but at least on the Soekris 4501 hardware, the performance hit is just too extreme. So for now it’s back to the drawing board…

 

Home Sweet Home…

Posted in Renting, Travelogue on 05/19/2010 03:57 pm by Daniel Hagan

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the new apartment that I leased in Braintree, MA lately. It’s a bit outside of the city, and on Sunday I had the windows open while I worked on some furniture. it wasn’t until later on in the day that I realized how much I had missed just hearing wind in the trees and birds chirping. it’s funny how insulated from everything you can become when you spend all your time in high rise hotels.

I’m really looking forward to summer in the Boston area. :-)