The server in the dmz that the Qcheck tests were run against is a P200 Debian Linux box, so I installed and ran the Qcheck "endpoint" Linux application on it during the tests. As for Netperf, after installing the application, I set the same P200 Debian Linux box in the dmz to receive netperf tests. I also installed netperf on 3 other boxes in the local network: the first is another P200 Debian Linux box, the second is an ancient AMD 486 DX/4-WB also running Debian Linux, and the third is the same PII400 Win2k box running Win2k that I mentioned in the Qcheck testing above. Then I used PuTTY to ssh to both of the Debian boxes and entered the same command without hitting enter. The dmz server in that case is a K6II 233 running Debian Linux, the 2 systems I ssh'd to are both P75's running Debian, and the desktop system I launched from is a P4 2.8GHz WinXP system. ...

I connected the power, video, keyboard, network and phone cables and inserted the Debian "sarge" CD I had burned eariler. Once the Debian boot screen came up I entered: linux26 at the prompt as I wanted to use the 2.6 kernel over the default 2.4 kernel. The new sarge installer is quite slick and it doesn't take a lot of Linux knowledge to get Debian running. Configuring Debian as a mail server is beyond the scope of this article, however, if you accept all defaults and choose Internet site, there is a good chance it might work. Note that you can always skip this step and come back to it later by typing: base-config Finally, choose Finish configuring the base system and congratulations, Debian is installed....

There was one system, a K6II 233 running Debian Linux connected directly to the CC box DMZ card thru a crossover cable and running the netserver daemon, which is the endpoint component to netperf. The four systems were two Pentium 75's each running Debian, a Pentium 133 also running Debian, and a P4 2.6Ghz box running Gentoo Linux....

Most distributions such as Red Hat Fedora, Gentoo and Debian are free. As you gain Linux experience, you can try more difficult distributions such as Debian or Gentoo. ...

While I'm no expert, I am most familiar with the Debian distribution so I decided to go that route. We first need to create a bootable installation CD and since I wanted a minimal amount of software, I started by downloading the official netinst ISO image for Debian stable which is currently named sarge....