Multi-drop PPPoE (Re: [ale] Mindspring/Earthlink DSL and linux?)

Joe Knapka jknapka at earthlink.net
Sun Sep 3 13:33:35 EDT 2000


Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> 
> Dow -
> 
> Coyote's stated minimum requirements are:
> 
> 
>      486DX/25Mhz (lesser processors can only be used if a
>      coprocessor is present)
>      12Mb RAM
>      1.44Mb Floppy Drive
>      VGA Display
> 
> I can tell you that I am working just fine with Coyote on an 8MB
> 486DX/33.  Your 386DX/40 (I'm guessing the DX means that the 386 has
> the coprocessor built in just like the 486) might be at the absolute
> low end of what's usable, as long as you get a good pair of supported
> NICs.  I wouldn't worry about DHCP load, but DNS load might be
> something you wouldn't want to do on that 386 as a Coyote-based
> firewall.

Intel's numbering is kind of neurotic. The difference between the
386DX and the 386SX is that the DX had a 32-bit data bus, while the
SX had an 16-bit data bus so as to enable systems to be built easily
using older hardware. The difference between the 486DX and SX
is the presence or absence of the floating-point unit. No 386 chips
had integrated FPU. The only thing you can really count on is that
SX means "crippled in some way."

That means Coyote won't run on any FPU-less 386 or 486SX out of
the box, but you could rebuild its kernel with FPU emulation and
run it that way, with some performance penalty. Enough to matter
for a router/firewall? Probably not, but who knows. I'm curious
as to why they require the FPU; certainly none of the kernel-land
packet filtering relies on it.

- Joe

-- 
*** Joseph Knapka ***
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
are to be treated as variables.
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