[ale] 486's as routers?

[Joseph A Knapka]

Stephen Turner wrote:
> 
> whats the benifits besides cost to using linux on a 486 as a router?

Hmm. Well, cost is a big one, if you can get them for
free. A 486 can easily saturate a 10Mbit network.

> whats the negatives?

Hard to get 486s these days, if you don't have any
lying around collecting dust. Hard to find
good RAM for 'em, too. A 486 may not be able
to fully utilize a 100Mbit network (though it might,
I've never tried). But if you can afford to have
100Mbit wires on *both* sides of your router, you
probably aren't going to worry about throwning
a few hundred bucks at a brand new crappy little
machine to do routing (like, say, one of those
obsolete 1Ghz Duron boxes :-).

Probably the only "business" use for old boxes like
that would be in schools and possibly nonprofits that
really can't afford to go out and buy new hardware,
and must make the most of what they've got.

-- Joe
   "Thanks to Microsoft, I am now blind in both eyes. They have
    rolled back in my head so many times this week that they
    are apparently stuck there now."
      - Jonathan Rickman, regarding M$ anti-open-source PR.

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