What is Balthasar?
Balthasar is my router and file server. Its primary task is handling NAT and packet queueing for my WAN connection.
I use OpenBSD's "pf" on FreeBSD 6.0 to handle all the routing, and NFS to provide file sharing.
The neat thing about it, is I've configured it to prioritize and queue packets in order of importance. This way, I can
do something very latency sensitive (like gaming) while someone else on the network may be downloading (using bittorrent) with
no impact on the higher priority communications.
I will be posting a fast and easy pf tutorial on the site soon, at which point I will link it here.
Balthasar F.A.Q.
Q: Where did you get the name "Balthasar"?
A: It has a couple different references. The first and foremost is in relevance to the name "Neovanglist" itself. Balthasar was
the name of one of the three wise-men who were present at the birth of Jesus. This was also the name used for one of the three
Magi supercomputers in the Japanese animation "Neon Genesis Evangelion".
Q: What kind hardware/OS/etc do you use for it?
A: See below.
Q: How do I access Balthasar?
A: Both melchior.neovanglist.net and ritialin.neovanglist.net are actually apache vhosts served from Balthasar. If you would like
access to the Balthasar media archive, (MAGI) please e-mail me with what you are willing to contribute and I should reply faily quickly.
Balthasar Specifications
- Make/Model: Sun Microsystems / Sun Fire v100
- CPU: UltraSPARC IIe 500Mhz
- RAM: 1GB - 4x ECC Registered SDRAM
- Video Card: N/A - Console Access Only
- Storage: 2x Western Digital 120GB 8MB Buffer @ UDMA33
- Operating System: FreeBSD 6.0-BETA3