[ Thanks to James
Maguire for this link. ]
“Setting up and maintaining networks used to be
something that only “super-geeks” did. Network engineers and
administrators at large enterprises usually have a lot of in-depth
technical knowledge about how systems work and how they communicate
with each other.“But these days, lots of people have small networks at their
homes and small businesses. They usually don’t have the same sort
of specialized knowledge, but they still need to be able to set up
and troubleshoot the inevitable problems.“Fortunately, developers have created plenty of open source
tools to help both groups accomplish what they need to get done.
Open source tools can help you design, test, deploy, manage,
monitor, or secure your network, and some can even help you build
your own appliances, routers, or other hardware.“And since both enterprises and homes users are feeling the
budget pinch these days, free open source networking tools are
becoming more popular than ever.”