Mike, you'll probably get as many opinions on this as there are people on this list. First, it's not really clear to me what you are trying to do. What exactly is meant by "provide local internet services" ? How is it being provided? PC terminals on a LAN? Wireless? Dialup? "extend the range of an existing public access service" seems to imply wireless of some kind? By extend do you mean add more wireless access points? As far as providing hosting services for web sites, these days it simply doesn't make sense to do it yourself. There are a litany of very high quality hosting providers in the US which offer hosting that includes a free domain name, email, tons of storage and bandwidth, web based site management tools etc. for less than $5/month. You simply can not beat this so I'd strongly recommend this option for anyone. For the router/firewall, I would choose something like a Linksys WRT54GL and put some custom Linux firmware on it like Tomato. These devices are cheap and reliable and since you mentioned wifi it would have everything you need. Specific roll-your-own dedicated hardware is almost always overkill unless you have a specific requirement for it. Regards, -- John Lange www.johnlange.ca On Wed, 2008-09-17 at 11:32 -0500, Mike Pfaiffer wrote:
I'm volunteering with a non-for-profit group. Part of the mandate is to provide local internet services to a particular part of town. Apparently all the agreements are in place and the papers signed. I've been asked to extend the range of an existing public access service as well as provide replacement web space for half a dozen groups/clubs. The hardware is older PC hardware donated to one of the groups. I'm not sure exactly what they have (neither are they) so I'm going to assume I have to put things together from scratch. Old hardware is more available than money.
I'm looking for a couple of easy to install and maintain packages. Specifically free router software and free web server software. If it can be set up in an afternoon it would be handy.
At the moment I'm concentrating on the router software. I've been to Sourceforge and Freshmeat and found half a dozen. The group in charge want wireless in the new location. I'm not sure some of the older packages can handle wireless cards. Since the building they have to house the machines is quite long I figured one at either end connected via a wired router in the middle would be a good idea.
I haven't set up dedicated servers like this before. Yes the people in charge know this and still want me to figure it out. I'd figure something still being maintained would be better than something which hasn't seen an update since 2000. I'd also guess OpenBSD would be preferred over Linux (or Windows). What are people using for this sort of thing?
Later Mike _______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.mb.ca http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable