Batboard

looking for a freeware program that will do network monitoring, routing, content filter, firewall functions.

i would be using an old dual cpu mobo and windows 2000 pro.

suggestion.

Ditch the win2k, and install CentOS or another Linux derivative, learn about 20 minutes worth of IPTables & Squid and be done with it. Freeware OS. Then you can even go and build more features into it, and you will be barely taxing the dual cpu mobo.

late 90s & early 2k MS products can't hold a candle to the *nix realm when it comes to cpu overhead, flexibility & stability.

you could see if theres something here: http://www.filehippo.com/ better to do what the thebigphish said...... Jim

thebigphish wrote:suggestion.

Ditch the win2k, and install CentOS or another Linux derivative, learn about 20 minutes worth of IPTables & Squid and be done with it. Freeware OS. Then you can even go and build more features into it, and you will be barely taxing the dual cpu mobo.

late 90s & early 2k MS products can't hold a candle to the *nix realm when it comes to cpu overhead, flexibility & stability.

Then if you feel like really having a good time you can set up your own internal web server, or a file server, or a print server... the list goes on. Pile on whatever features you like and it won't come close to overbearing your system.

I can't stress the horsepower you can bilk from an older system, with even moderate hardware. I have a couple of Pentium IIs & IIIs with a half a gig of RAM which are hosting message boards, mail server, NTP, a replication server, a standalone Samba box, MySQL, a FreeRADIUS daemon, etc....and they are all screaming.

You don't even have to install a GUI, they are light on HD space, and it will only take you a little bit to get comfy w/ SSH, and then you will be where i am with a single KVM on 4 separate computers. Trust me, make the switch. Once you do, you might be able to find a nice multiprocessor aware kernel which will probably make that quite the effective multiprocessing system, since i recall you having stated you had a dual processor motherboard. You will be suprised.

One downside to lots of older boxes - power consumption. I've recently migrated a bunch of stuff from old P2/P3 boxen to one beefy dual Xeon box running VMWare ESXi (free). Cut the power consumption down by about 75%, with more performance available to boot.