Basically I want to configure a FreeBSD (8.2) server to act like a network switch. One cable from fibre optic modem coming in on one NIC. And one cable going out from NIC 2 on the same subnet (an 16 public IP block from ISP) to a layer 2 network switch, to the other servers using the public subnet. Can this be done? I'm going to try it by setting up both NICs on same subnet, different IPs and then set
in rc.conf. Just doing some research before I go to the office and start disrupting the connection.
Why not just use a switch between the modem and WAN facing NICs?
Because the back end (ISP) doesn't like talking to layer 2 devices, couldn't send email to yahoo, yet every other mail domain worked fine. I've tried using the router they supplied, split my public subnet into two; one on each interface, bridged them, and then put the switch behind that. Because the router is layer 3, it solved my sending to yahoo mail problem but I only get half my internet upload speed.
I've tried so many different configurations, each switch I use has slightly different behaviour. Basically the internet connection and/or the modem seem very fussy about the hardware it talks to. One things for sure, If I connect a server directly to the modem, I get full speed, infact I get double the upload speed I should be getting on my contract. So, I thought I'd let FreeBSD do my networking, I'm confident it can get more out of my connection than these damn off-the-shelf routers/switches.
The cable modem is 100Mb/s full duplex. I need a good networking stack (FreeBSD) to buffer this as I'm convinced it's the speed and duplex on different links that's causing the problems.
How can I do this, one cable from modem to FreeBSD server, service running on this FreeBSD server, then share through a second NIC and switch to another server (Solaris) also running internet services.
All the guides / documentation I can find regarding gateways / routers are related to 2 subnets. But I want to do only with one public subnet.
Code:
gateway_enable="YES"
Why not just use a switch between the modem and WAN facing NICs?
Because the back end (ISP) doesn't like talking to layer 2 devices, couldn't send email to yahoo, yet every other mail domain worked fine. I've tried using the router they supplied, split my public subnet into two; one on each interface, bridged them, and then put the switch behind that. Because the router is layer 3, it solved my sending to yahoo mail problem but I only get half my internet upload speed.
I've tried so many different configurations, each switch I use has slightly different behaviour. Basically the internet connection and/or the modem seem very fussy about the hardware it talks to. One things for sure, If I connect a server directly to the modem, I get full speed, infact I get double the upload speed I should be getting on my contract. So, I thought I'd let FreeBSD do my networking, I'm confident it can get more out of my connection than these damn off-the-shelf routers/switches.
The cable modem is 100Mb/s full duplex. I need a good networking stack (FreeBSD) to buffer this as I'm convinced it's the speed and duplex on different links that's causing the problems.
How can I do this, one cable from modem to FreeBSD server, service running on this FreeBSD server, then share through a second NIC and switch to another server (Solaris) also running internet services.
All the guides / documentation I can find regarding gateways / routers are related to 2 subnets. But I want to do only with one public subnet.