LILRC had been paying nearly $400 a month for its Internet Connection; its bandwidth was 1.4mb. After looking into Optimum’s Power to Learn Program; it was found that the price of the connection could be lowered to $84.00 per month; including the cost of the IP Addresses. The speed of this connection was substantially faster; however, LILRC has more than five computers and servers, so the idea of all having static IP addresses was out. Previously we had a full ‚C‘ range and more than enough addresses to go around. The new arrangement forced an restructuring of our network.
Basically what we have set up is a Private Network for the LAN with 192.xxx.xxx.xxx addresses and Static Addresses for four of the servers. The incoming connection connects to a Gateway Server Machine which was built in-house. The sever has three network interface cards, One incoming and two outgoing which point to the private LAN and DMZ which will have all of the servers. The machine has a quad core processor and was purchased from tiger direct as parts for about $249. Debian Linux (the latest Testing Version) was installed with the latest kernal; and Iptables was enabled in order to establish a firewall and IP forwarding will be used for the servers sitting on the DMZ network. This is advantageous since the servers are now isolated from the LAN with an added element of security. For a cost of under $300 and on on-going cost of only about $84.00 per month, LILRC now has a connection with download speeds approaching 12mbps. In these times where funding is difficult to come by, member libraries should check out Power to Learn from Optimum.