Or if you installed something stupid like Oracles Enterprise Manager.


Cheers,
Tink

Celerons are poor processors for servers because they are not design for the load. Celerons are designed for only for enconomy desktops. If you are going to run tons of programs at once, buy at least a dual processor system. I suggest AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ with 1 GB of ECC memory. A real server uses ECC and parity memory.

A proxy server like squid does not add any security. It just adds web page caching, parent guardian, and bandwidth throttling. A firewall like iptables/netfilters includes port filter, packet filter, bandwith throttling.

People always said buy a router with NAT. There is a loop to NAT and routers because routers already does NAT. It is router's nature to translate the address from incoming to another address for out going. A router is design to balance, control the flow of packets, and redirect the packets that has the least amount latency. Smart routers includes port filtering. The NAT sticker on consumer grade routers makes idiots smile while experts and I are laughing.

If you do not know how to setup iptables to protect your self from the outside world, you should not setup your computer to be used as a router. A consumer grade router is all you need. If you want more control with consumer grade routers, I suggest a Buffalo Technologies wireless/wired router. It provides a lot of features that experts will like.

X Window System can be used remotely through SSH. The SSH client have to have support for this. Since giantjoebot is going to run Azureus, X Window System needs to be running. I suggest using a very light weight desktop/window manager like fluxbox or blackbox. Though it is true that X Window System should not be used when running a server.

A lot of people do not understand how fast processors are. An 80386 can handle 100 Mb with out any problems. The processor that is in consumer grade routers is a 16 MHz to 33 MHz processor. The processor could be a PowerPC, ARM, or some other chip.

Eh? You're obviously making the mistake of thinking that all routers
have to be ADSL devices or something that connect a small network
with a private address range to the internet?

A router DOESN'T automatically have to do NAT at all, that
statement is complete rubbish.


Cheers,
Tink

Routers handles the network layer in OSI model. Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model. ADSL is not a router. ADSL is a modem that works at the physical layer in OSI model. I think you are confused on brouters which have both a router and a bridge.

I believe Tinkster's point was that routers are not neccessarily network-address translation devices. The vast majority of routers only ROUTE packets without changing them (other than reducing the ttl by one and changing the source MAC, but those are functions of the IP level, not the routing).

P2P and NAT don't mix very well. You either have to forward the ports used to a single computer or the software needs to use a UDP hole punching technique. (See the August 2006 issue of Linux Journal for an article explaining it.) For a home network, a linksys or similar NAT router is handy. You probably use a single network interface on your hosts, and being isolated from the internet allows you to open up more ports for local traffic.

I think that I misunderstood what you want to do. I was thinking that you were going to set up something like a video podcast server. Now I understand that you want a media server for downloading, storing videos and then serve it to computers on the LAN. You could have it behind a NAT router, and redirect the ports that Azereus uses to the media computer.

I thought that you needed to start the X server on a remote computer to be able to for example use ssh -X to run a gui program remotely. Doesn't the X server on the server relay the x windows traffic to the remote x server?

You could from your regular desktop or laptop remotely run the azereus program. It would be running on the server but you would be using the window manager on the remote computer. This would use up less traffic than remotely running the desktop. I guess that to install azereus, you will have dependencies that will in effect install much of either kde or gnome. But you don't have to have to be running them.

I would still recommend keeping the media server lean and mean, simply because you don't want a lot of services using up cycles when drive access and latency are so important for a media server.

I would also recommend googling for "ext3 reiserfs xfs jfs benchmark" to find articles comparing different filesystems. Some will be better at larger files. Some will use the CPU more when accessing files than others.

No, the remote X client (e.g. azureus) talks directly with the X server on your local desktop through the SSH connection.

i run torrentflux on a webserver behind a linux NAT router. even though it needs mysql, it uses hardly any resources -- way less than azureus is going to use. the other advantage is you can track and manage your torrents from anywhere if the webserver is on the net.

Thanks matir. I just verified that I can run konqueror remotely on my desktop, after switching the desktop to init level 3. However, does it work if x windows is not installed? Wouldn't the dependency issues alone require it?

I looked at "ps xU root -A" afterwards which proved that "X" wasn't running.

You may need x11libs, but not the main X binaries and all. It'll still be much 'slimmer'. And, of course, not running X means less resource usage.

WOW so many replies. Thanks feels good. There are several different remote plugins for azurues, and I know there are leaner bittorrent clients out there, but I don't know of any that have something like azurue's safepeer plugin. Plus I am familare with azurues, and I was told that it already comes installed on SimplyMepis, which was recomended to me as a good first time Linux distro. Oh, did I not mention that before, Uh yeah I've never actually used Linux before. But I plan on using it soon as a second OS on my main rig, on my media server, and I've been thinking about putting it on my laptop.

I know that a Celeron isn't a serer grade CPU, but I was first planning on running this on a P2 or P3. Its just a small home network, and I think it will work fine. Even if I do run x it should still run faster than XP right.

Man some of this stuff you guys are talking about is over my head. It will take me a while to read up on all of it, but that great, its why I ask these sorts of questions. I love learning new stuff.

I think I'm going to use an old P2 I got for free for the proxy server, but I still don't understand if I should put it behind a router or not. And the reason, that the guy gave who told me to do so, was for the hardware firewall.

I was looking into the firewall feature on a router I was considering using, and I don't think its needed. I have the firewall enabled on my current router, but I don't think it does anything since I never changed the settings. This is after all a home network, and I have little concern for hakers, and the things that I am looking to protect myself from, viruses and spyware, I don't think it will protect me from at all.

This is the description D-link gives of its router firewall

"With the DI-524 Wireless Router's built-in advanced firewall, threats of hackers penetrating your network are minimized. Some firewall features include functions that allow or disallow certain ports to be open for certain applications. Time scheduling can be established as a firewall rule so that specific ports will be open at certain times and be closed at other times. Features like content filtering, MAC filtering, URL blocking, and domain blocking are useful tools to prevent other unwanted intruders from connecting to your network or browsing restricted sites."

I do use MAC address filtering.

I think you are confused because you're using routing and
natting as if they were synonyms.


Cheers,
Tink

Why you said routers do not do NAT. My books saids they do. Also try using traceroute.

I said because they don't. Only a small group of routers,
namely ADSL and Cable-ones (or small appliances for SoHo
without public IPs for their network hosts) do. A router does
just that: it routes packages, no address rewriting.

Get a more accurate book ;}


Cheers
Tink

Most 'SOHO' routers have additional functionality in the form of a NAT device. Take a look at the Wikipedia entry on Routers for a more detailed explanation on the differences and overlaps.