"Road Runner and my LAN have been peacefully coexisting
ever since. There have been a couple of quirks due to NetMAX and
Road Runner quarrelling over DNS duties. Some links in the Road
Runner Web site, particularly those used for account maintenance,
are abbreviated on the assumption that DNS will resolve the
complete URL. And it did before NetMAX was installed. But now I
have to enter the complete URL to get to the page I need.
NetMAX is my first firewall and I believe it was a good starter.
Configuring the box so that it functions as a DHCP client on one
NIC and as DHCP server on the other was painless. I know from
previous attempts that this is not always the case. But it doesn't
allow a great deal of granularity in specifying rules for the
firewall, nor does it provide the type of reporting I expected. I'm
going to be evaluating other choices for the future, but for now
I'm happy to have NetMAX between me and the big bad Internet.
Road Runner and the hosting service together cost less than a
third of what I was paying previously to the telephone company and
ISP for my ISDN pipe. Not only was I cutting costs, I was
dramatically increasing bandwidth. The only down side has been
giving up the ability to run a server: something prohibited by Road
Runner's terms of service. There have been rumors of a new
commercial offering by Road Runner, which would allow both fixed IP
addresses and the right to run servers. If those rumors prove to be
true, I may move my Web site back home where it belongs."
