OT: Network Design with OpenBSD

[Lucas Reddinger <lucas_(_at_)_wlwdesigns_(_dot_)_com>]

Tomorrow I am heading to Dallas for the National Competition of
something called The Business Professionals of America. While they have
competitions in business finance, databasing, and such, they also have
competitions in networking.

Here in Montana, I placed first in Computer Network Technologies, which
is an out of date competition, involving questions about BNC connectors
and satellites. I am also on a Network Design Team, and we placed first
at the state level.

I have posted occasionally to the mailing lists, as some of you may have
seen. I use OpenBSD on all of my servers, and even on many workstations.
I have always had a place for OpenBSD in my network designs.

My team's knowledge of IDS on OpenBSD, along with firewalling and such
services have gotten us to where we are, I believe.

Now the question: are there any new technologies that are bleeding edge,
yet have a need in a network?

We have used IDS, DNS/MAIL/WWW/FTP/NFS servers, PF, and proxying.

I know many of you constantly have your heads stuck in Cisco Routers,
OpenBSD firewalls, and IDSes. Now could you tell about any tricks, tips,
or anything else that could possibly help us in competition?

At the state competition, it was funny, they had a company that
wanted an intrusion detection system, so we proposed SNORT on an OpenBSD
server. We presented this to the judge. It was suppoed it be a formal
presentation, but the jusdge interjected, "Isn't that the operating
system that is supposed to run on any platform?" So I went on to explain
the difference between Net and Open, and why we are using Open. He they
said, "Oh, yeah.. the Canadian guy started the project, right?"

Basically, if we are getting recognition for using OpenBSD in _Montana_,
we are on the right path. :)

Lucas Reddinger