A Raq4 has two ethernet ports on the back (eth0 and eth1).

I know that Firewalling - using the Raq4 as a Firewall to connect to the outside world as well as your internal area - is not possible after reading the many posts in the Sun support forum. How about clustering?

This means imagine a group of 4 Raqs that are linked to the internet as well as linked in a Ring formation via their spare ports.

Would load balancing via clustering (or even clustering without load balancing!) be an option given the many Linux load balancing software out there?

Thanks in advance!

FYI I also just found out a Raq4 can host Half-Life Counterstrike or Neverwinternight gaming servers :) thus my next aim will be to make the Raq4 make me some coffee... :stickout

The best "clustering" (read: easiest) solution is available through StaQware, which is really just a failover solution whereby one RaQ mirrors the other in realtime and assumes hosting duties should the primary go down. You can find StaQware floating around for less than $300.

One other quick comment, firewalling may not be officially supported by you certainly can use a 3i or 4i as a firewall if you so desire, provided you have the skill to implement your own software solution. That being said, the 3 and 4's use the 2.2 kernel, you'd be much better off utilizing a firewall with a 2.4 kernel to allow for iptables (as opposed to ipchains in 2.2).

Of course, if you wanted to get really crazy, there is an unsupported 2.2>2.4 kernel upgrade out there, but once you do that your RaQ is about as close to being a white box as it can get. New patches/upgrades won't work, etc.

Have fun!

Brandon