Present Perfect

We've been having major network problems at work lately : our ADSL went bonkers with outside ping times of over 13 seconds, our leased line connection couldn't be used, and the Windows 2000 server started acting up, including the first blue screen on this machine in about a year and a half.

So I finally convinced my boss to let me install a dedicated linux router to handle all of this stuff, and put an ISDN modem and regular modem in that to be brought up when the standard ADSL fails.

I had no idea that the basics would be this easy : my boss gave me an old pentium he still had lying around. I plunked in the Red Hat 7.2 disc, booted, installed packages, gave it some IP info, and put it on the net. Then I just did echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward, gave my own machine this new machine as a gateway, and hey presto ! It worked.

Right now I'm going to a few routing HOWTO's, to learn some more on how to control bandwidth and stuff. With good reason : one of the main reasons the ADSL connection went fully saturated is because someone here thought it was a good idea to send a 2.5 MB attachment to 70 different people. Some people should be shot for sending more mail MB's in one mail than I do in a whole lifetime !

And I should be shot for having allowed this behaviour in the first place, but one can go insane listening to whining of marketing people who really insist on sending 5MB+ powerpoint presentationts through e-mail. And they make me feel like a dinosaur trying to explain them why e-mail shouldn't be used for this ...

We've been having major network problems at work lately : our ADSL went bonkers with outside ping times of over 13 seconds, our leased line connection couldn't be used, and...