Freesco Info

Historicaly, I've been a supporter of the Freesco Linux Router project (as well as IP Fire and OpenWRT). I gave a presentation on it to the Portland Unix/Linux User Group (PLUG) in January 2003. (Hopefully, I can find the missing slides, and when I do I'll post them on this page.) In the meantime, it is a free replacement for commerical routers supporting up to 10 ethernet/arcnet/token ring network cards and up to 8 modems. The FreeSCO software fits completely on a floppy disk (1.44 Mb) and can run in as little as 8 Mb of RAM. Obviously, if you have more memory or install it to a harddrive, you can greatly expand it's capabilities. For more information see the following links:

Freesco Main Site http://www.freesco.org/

Freesco Alt Main Site http://www.freesco.net/

Freesco forums http://forums.freesco.org/support

Freesco Map http://www.frappr.com/freesco

FreeSCO was designed as an alternative to CISCO and other commercial router / firewall combinations.

From the FreeSCO webpage, I was able to pull the following information:

FREESCO is based on the Linux operating system. And incorporates many of the features of other Linux distributions into software that fits onto a single 1.44 meg floppy diskette. With FREESCO, you can configure:

• a simple bridge with up to 10 Ethernet segments
• a router with up to 10 Ethernet segments
• a dialup line router
• a leased line router
• an Ethernet router
• a dial-in server with up to 10 modems (with multiport modems).
• a time server
• a dhcp server
• a http server
• a ftp server
• a dns server
• a ssh server
• a print server (requires TCP/IP printing client software)

FREESCO also incorporates firewalling and NAT, which are resident within the Linux kernel, to help protect you and your network. All of these features can be used in conjunction with each other or individually.