Interfaces Galore!

I’m going to hide this behind a cut because it’s just a bit of bragging / dorkyness about having lots of NICs in one box:

This is nifty:

# brconfig
bridge0: flags=0<>
priority 32768 hellotime 2 fwddelay 15 maxage 20 holdcnt 6 proto rstp
fxp4 flags=3<LEARNING,DISCOVER>
port 5 ifpriority 0 ifcost 0
fxp3 flags=3<LEARNING,DISCOVER>
port 4 ifpriority 0 ifcost 0
fxp2 flags=3<LEARNING,DISCOVER>
port 3 ifpriority 0 ifcost 0
fxp1 flags=3<LEARNING,DISCOVER>
port 2 ifpriority 0 ifcost 0
fxp0 flags=3<LEARNING,DISCOVER>
port 1 ifpriority 0 ifcost 0
Addresses (max cache: 100, timeout: 240):
#

Which is comprised of:

# ifconfig
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 33208
groups: lo
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x8
fxp0: flags=8902<BROADCAST,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
lladdr 00:04:ac:a3:6c:ce
media: Ethernet autoselect (none)
status: no carrier
fxp1: flags=8902<BROADCAST,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
lladdr 00:50:8b:f9:de:62
media: Ethernet autoselect (none)
status: no carrier
fxp2: flags=8902<BROADCAST,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
lladdr 00:50:8b:f9:de:63
media: Ethernet autoselect (none)
status: no carrier
fxp3: flags=8902<BROADCAST,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
lladdr 00:08:02:3d:34:e4
media: Ethernet autoselect (none)
status: no carrier
fxp4: flags=8902<BROADCAST,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
lladdr 00:08:02:3d:34:e5
media: Ethernet autoselect (none)
status: no carrier
gem0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
lladdr 00:0a:27:af:cf:08
groups: egress
media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX full-duplex)
status: active
inet6 fe80::20a:27ff:feaf:cf08%gem0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x6
inet 192.168.0.196 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.0.255
enc0: flags=0<> mtu 1536
bridge0: flags=0<> mtu 1500
groups: bridge
#

Now I just need to get another 4-port Intel NIC (fxp) and I’ll have what I need for a switch-in-a-PC with capabilities for per-port monitoring, firewalling, etc. I guess I’ll have to get some graphs going or something. Maybe I’ll finally have a use for Cacti.

Hmm, I will have to crossover-wire a punch panel for connecting each machine to, as the ports don’t auto-cross, but that shouldn’t be difficult.

Today I completely stripped the PowerMac G4 AGP down to plastics, dusted everything off, vacuumed out the fuzz, and replaced the fan in the power supply with an old Papst near-silent fan that I had left over from a rather aged computer. Thus far I’ve also unplugged the video card fan, the large case fan, the CD-ROM, and the Zip drive. It’s now a really, really quiet Mac. Since it’s not really displaying much, and I might even pull the card for production use.

I ordered a plug-right-into-the-IDE-port CF adapter from eBay which supports DMA transfers, so hopefully that’ll work good for my main drive.

So, hopefully within the next couple of weeks my network at home will go from having an Airport Extreme handling everything back to a OpenBSD box at the core of it all, with the Airport Extreme as just an access point / WDS bridge for the Airport Expresses, and no need for a switch. This has the potential to be pretty nifty.