[Cialug] Simple Setup - FreeBSD as Router

jim kraai jimgkraai at gmail.com
Thu Aug 16 16:07:29 CDT 2012


Greetings,

I'm new to this group, but I've met several members over the last ten
years.  Those individuals may or may not want to admit that, so I
won't shout out any names.

What I'm trying to do with a dedicated freeBSD router is
- log timing results for a web service to track down slow responses, etc.
- log response content to look for things that aren't being
compressed, could be streamlined, etc.

I'm in a tester role and won't have access to the IIS (or the logs
thereof) serving these requests.

The web server clients include several different browsers on a desktop
and a few mobile/tablet wireless devices.

I've worked with Linux and FreeBSD off and on for about 15 years, but
I haven't ever done any interesting networking.

At work, I have set up a headless desktop server with a vanilla
install of the latest stable FreeBSD.  It has two NICs.
[network / web server via an office router]
	[freeBSD router for logging] <--- this is what I need help configuring
		[generic netgear wireless router NAT, etc.]
			[desktop - wired connection to wireless router]
			[android phone - wireless]
			[android tablet - wireless]
			[kindle - wireless]
			[iPhone - wireless]
			[iPad - wireless]

This isn't for load testing.  I don't believe I'll need to know which
device is generating traffic.

What's new, what should I watch out for, etc?  I can Google, too, and
there are plenty of very old step-by-step guides out there.

(I do know that FreeBSD isn't Linux.  I actually know the difference
and watched the history play out way back when.)

Thanks for your patience,

--jim


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