I had a technician come out to replace my Toshiba modem. When
he was here, he was very inquisitive about linux and what it was.
I explained briefly about the OS and how I was using my machine
as a firewall for my home LAN. He didn't seem to care at all.
They should be happy. They have a more secure network with
some people using firewalls. That decreases the chance of
a newbie's machine getting hacked and being used to send spam
or trade warez.
Also, this means that any machine behind the firewall will
be filtered from using RR bandwidth. I have masquerading enabled,
so my machine only passes on my roommate's packets (for example)
that are destined for outside. They don't then have to worry
about stupid NICs getting set to promiscuous mode. (Assuming my NIC is
not the stupid one. :-)
And of course, it cuts down the number of IP addresses
they have to monitor. The down side to this is network stats.
They have no good way to know what types of machines are the
most common or any other usage statistics. Maybe they'd like to
know that Mac users visit the help page more, but from my end
they'd never know because all packets coming from me look like
my linux box sent them.
Just some thoughts,
Dave
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