HostSeries

Recently in the office, we began having problems with out internet connection and IM disconnecting regularly. Yes, we should have known better than using a residential grade Linksys router in the office. Normally it won’t be a big problem, but we need our internet connection to remain online 24/7 for the IP Phones and for communicating with our other offices during nighttime hours, etc.
So we set out on a search for a inexpensive business grade router, preferably from Linksys/Cisco. Interestingly enough we ran into the Vyatta team at HostingCon2007, and picked up a CD.

I’m not a big Debian user (as I love the power of “yum”) but found Vyatta to be very easy to use. So over the next month or so we tested all the configuration options that we would use within the office. We recently went live with it, and haven’t looked back at the dusty Linksys since. Sure, Vyatta is probably major overkill for our uses, but it’s rock solid.

So some quick features of the Vyatta system…

++ Vyatta is a Cli router, seeing as it’s based on Debian. However they do have a web based GUI which can be used once enabled. (That’s right, it’s not enabled by default.) GUI will probably seem bulky if you’re use to the likes of Linksys or Netgear interfaces. Keep in mind, Vyatta is more enterprise than these residential routers. But my main purpose is to introduce opensource more into the residential areas and uses.

++ You can do just about anything with Vyatta aside from port-forwarding. Yea, that seems kind of cheesy, but according to Vyatta, they are working on that. We were a bit disabled with not having port forwarding, but we got by, we just had to assign some additional IPs to our Vyatta to access systems within our network.
And there’s many more features, I just don’t have time to touch on.

During setup we did find the documentation a little hard to follow. That is, for those of us that didn’t have a complete understanding of networking, DNS, IPs, subnets, masks, etc. I mentioned this to Vyatta, and they didn’t seem to interested in putting together a “dummy’s” guide to Vyatta. So over the course of the next couple of weeks, I will do my best to spit out some articles and howto’s on getting Vyatta up and running for the “dummy.”

Whether it will be the big rival of Cisco, I don’t know. Only time will tell… but I have high hopes. As long as the Vyatta team focuses on the feature request of the community, and continues to put out a great product, I don’t see why someday they might have a large portion of the marketshare.