Laith,

Since you use Vyatta from my readings on your posts, I just want to know what limitations I have with it.

I'm looking to just play around with it. I'm looking for CLI documentation and such.

What kind of hardware would I need?

Can you give me as much info as possible?

Well, the best place to find all info you need is http://www.vyatta.org.

However, you will need either a PC, PII is more than enough, no more than 512MB of ram, or, you will need a good PC/Laptop and a virtualization software to run Vyatta vertualized.

You can configure Vyatta using CLI or webGUI, they are the same and consistent, if you learn one of them you will easily use to the other.

Docs are available at http://vyatta.org/documentation, you need to register before downloading them, registration is free.

Regarding the limitation, you can find a feature list with the docs, generally, Vyatta is a basic router, though it is very stable and powerful in what it does, yet I prefer ASA as a firewall, Juniper is preferable as well, if you don't have $$ you can use Vyatta vertualized within VMware ESXi server, it is free, but you have to provide a server, if infrastructure is available then vyatta is your choice. Although, you can run JunOS illegally vertualized, as well as the ASA software, but it still illegal, useful for learning and so on....

Vyatta's most important feature is, legally free ;), without considering the HW. For ex. I use it mostly at the subscriber/remote side, where I need routing protocols like BGP/OSPF, and cannot afford an expensive HW, I use a very cheap old PC, with minor modifications, and setup Vyatta, and get a full BGP capable router up and running in less than 20 mins.

Hope that help,

Thanks, Laith

Laith,

I appreciate all the information you have given me.

I will most likely play around with a virtualized version.

I ran the liveCD on a virtual machine, but in order to connect multiple virtual machines I would need something other than VBox.

It's too bad you can't get WIC cards to simulate a WAN network.

ie 3 routers connected to each other using serial links.

Well, there are serial interfaces supported only with the official HW and a commercial license.

As you can imagine, this is one of the limitations ;)