tankman1989
Active Member
- Reaction score
- 5
I know a lot of ISP's are starting to cap broadband usage and charging for going over allotted amounts. To make matters worse with high speed cable/DSL/FiOS we are now able to reach these limits without realizing how much we are actually using. The worse thing IMO is getting a charge on your next bill for some outrageous over-usage amount that is almost equal to the total monthly bill. In addition to this many of today's routers and MOST of last decade's routers are under powered especially with P2P usage. This opens up a whole new market that has not been touched for the residential and small business market.
I'm in the process of setting up a Linux router/proxy server and may instal something like Dan's guardian to get to know it. This combo would be excellent as a managed services sales pitch. These can run on just about any old machine and there are plenty of old P4's out there that would be more than adequate to handle this process (the Linksys WRT54g has a 200mhz processor so think what a P4 could do with packet allocation). I would find a couple old hard drives - 80 or 120Gb or larger, and run them in a softRAID 1 under Linux (softRAID will boot the OS). This will guarantee that their Internet won't go down if an older HD fails but make sure the PSU looks good.
I would install a gigabit network card and use that as the LAN connection and the on-board LAN (most P4's have them) will be at least 100mbps which should be more than adequate for the WAN connection.
If you are selling to parents who want to filter the content of their children's web surfing you could offer a third network card which would not run through Dan's Guardian - basically an "Adult's network".
Now the only problem with doing this is that you will need to add a wireless card that is compatible with Linux. I have been told that the Atheros chip-set is most compatible as it is an open source chip-set. just check if the wi-fi card is Linux compatible before buying.
Now if the customers want a wireless network for the kids and one for the "adults" then unfortunately two wireless cards will be needed as well. If the PC is short on PCI slots then USB 2 adapters will work.
The only thing that I can think of that could be a problem is that sometimes with a proxy a website won't update as often as not behind a proxy. All this means is that the user will have to refresh the page once in a while but this can be changed in the Squid settings.
I would think that this could be done on a Windows box as well but I would think that having another Windows box might tempt the clients to use it for surfing or whatever and mess it up - not to mention that it won't run nearly as smoothly as a Linux server box for this application - oh and licensing cost.
With people paying $50-80 a month for high speed and being more impatient than ever, selling a $300-400 router/firewall/proxy/filter should not be out of the question ESPECIALLY for a business. I would think $600+ would be acceptable for a business to make their employees more efficient.
If a customer balks at the price I would offer a 14-30 day trial and see what they say. This is something that can really be seen once it is installed (well the effects are seen).
Oh, don't forget that you can add QoS filtering, port forwarding VPN, DynDNS and everything else that a router can do, and do it faster and better than a commercial/consumer router.
Thoughts?
I'm in the process of setting up a Linux router/proxy server and may instal something like Dan's guardian to get to know it. This combo would be excellent as a managed services sales pitch. These can run on just about any old machine and there are plenty of old P4's out there that would be more than adequate to handle this process (the Linksys WRT54g has a 200mhz processor so think what a P4 could do with packet allocation). I would find a couple old hard drives - 80 or 120Gb or larger, and run them in a softRAID 1 under Linux (softRAID will boot the OS). This will guarantee that their Internet won't go down if an older HD fails but make sure the PSU looks good.
I would install a gigabit network card and use that as the LAN connection and the on-board LAN (most P4's have them) will be at least 100mbps which should be more than adequate for the WAN connection.
If you are selling to parents who want to filter the content of their children's web surfing you could offer a third network card which would not run through Dan's Guardian - basically an "Adult's network".
Now the only problem with doing this is that you will need to add a wireless card that is compatible with Linux. I have been told that the Atheros chip-set is most compatible as it is an open source chip-set. just check if the wi-fi card is Linux compatible before buying.
Now if the customers want a wireless network for the kids and one for the "adults" then unfortunately two wireless cards will be needed as well. If the PC is short on PCI slots then USB 2 adapters will work.
The only thing that I can think of that could be a problem is that sometimes with a proxy a website won't update as often as not behind a proxy. All this means is that the user will have to refresh the page once in a while but this can be changed in the Squid settings.
I would think that this could be done on a Windows box as well but I would think that having another Windows box might tempt the clients to use it for surfing or whatever and mess it up - not to mention that it won't run nearly as smoothly as a Linux server box for this application - oh and licensing cost.
With people paying $50-80 a month for high speed and being more impatient than ever, selling a $300-400 router/firewall/proxy/filter should not be out of the question ESPECIALLY for a business. I would think $600+ would be acceptable for a business to make their employees more efficient.
If a customer balks at the price I would offer a 14-30 day trial and see what they say. This is something that can really be seen once it is installed (well the effects are seen).
Oh, don't forget that you can add QoS filtering, port forwarding VPN, DynDNS and everything else that a router can do, and do it faster and better than a commercial/consumer router.
Thoughts?
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