Bridge Ethernets Over T1? 9
michael_cain asks: "I have to take a series of demos 'on the road' occasionally and have to have a data connection back to the home lab. In many cases this takes the form of a T1. In order to terminate that at both ends, I currently have to have a CSU/DSU and baby router at each end. I would like to simplify this arrangement; does anyone know of a pair of small boxes that would let me use a T1 as a simple Ethernet bridge (well, a learning bridge would be nice)? Just plug the T1 into one side of each, a 10BaseT or 100BaseT into the other side of each, and relay Ethernet frames back and forth?"
Nice idea (Score:1)
Re:Nice idea (Score:2)
A Bridge Too Far (Score:2)
LRP and Sangoma WAN-PIPE (Score:1)
Eliminate/Integrate the CSU. (Score:3)
A cisco 1720 with integrated CSU/DSU is about $2200 list price.
Or, buy a synchronous PCI card with integrated CSU/DSU (~$600) and install it in your demo server.
If you're just using a laptop, perhaps one of the docking stations with a PCI slot would be workable. Dell has these.
This would require drivers under your OS, etc so it would probably be more of a hassle than just integrating the CSU/DSU into the router. Also with the router you can hook anything to it, and you don't have to worry about having drivers, etc for your OS.
Yes you can do that with OpenBSD (Score:1)
ethernet cards.. As a plus, you use IPsec to encrypt the traffic. You run the OpenBSD bridging to bridge together the two networks.
Re:A Bridge Too Far (Score:1)
Cheap, no, easy, yes. (Score:1)
Any old Cisco IOS based box will do the trick. Start with this link [cisco.com] to get basic transparent bridging information.
If you look further down, you'll see "Ethernet Bridging Example" with Figure 40 in it, where they route IP and DECNet, and bridge everything else. Well, if you remove IP and DECNet, it works too.
Of course, the request was for a cheap box. IOS based boxes are far from the cheapest, particularly on the low end. A 1605 would be about the cheapest thing for the job. Most any "router" on the low end that also supports bridging will do the job, bridging over a WAN is pretty easy.
That said, why not just route?
VPN (Score:1)