You don't need to. From the start, our mission was to design a server and gateway that was fast, stable and extremely user-friendly. If you can use the web, you can use the SaIG'way server and gateway. You manage the entire system from a simple control panel on your web browser. And you need never see a Linux prompt. The SaIG'way server and gateway is perfect for customers with no Linux knowledge.
That's fine by us - after all, it's your network. The beauty of the SaIG'way server & gateway is that you don't have to change: you can drop our product into your existing network and it will work seamlessly with any combination of Microsoft Windows, Mac or UNIX machines. The look and feel of your desktops won't change. The only differences you'll notice will be improved performance and lower costs.
Most users with simple reauirements don't need much support after their system is configured, and even configuration is easy, given our Getting Started guide.
But is your requirements are more demanding, is is possible to subscribe - on an annual basis - for support.
In Australia, we also offer support, as-needed. (Ring us for details.)
Elsewhere, the developers of the underlying product offer support based on an subscription fee. Rather than charging a set price for the software & then tacking on separate charges for technical support, upgrades and other items (some vendors even charge extra for a restore disc!), they keep it simple... giving you everything you need - software, upgrades and unlimited technical support - in one package.
There are no hidden costs, no per-call or per-incident support fees and no per-user licenses.
This product (a value-added, repackaging of another company's product) is based on GNU/Linux - an open source operating system.
Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation, put it best: "When we speak of `free software'," he said, "we're talking about freedom, not price. Think of free speech, not free beer." (See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html.)
Many thousands of large and small companies around the world already use Linux in a wide variety of environments. And thanks to its superior reliability and performance, the use of Linux-based servers has grown at an incredible pace. International Data Corp. (IDC) research states that Linux paid shipments grew faster than any other server operating system over the past two years. IDC preliminary figures for 1999 show Linux shipments represented 24.6 per cent of the shipments for the server operating system market, up from 15.8 in 1998. Research firm Netcraft, Inc. states that as of April 2000, 34 per cent of all public Web sites ran on Linux, making Linux the most popular choice for deploying public websites.
For more information about the rate of Linux adoption and the origins of the Linux operating system, please see the background paper, `Why Linux means business'.
With thSaIG'way server and gateway, you don't need a network administrator. The software is extremely easy to use and intuitive, which means you'll be up and running in no time. And as an SaIG'way subscriber, you'll have the security of knowing that our technical team is standing by in the event you need advice or assistance.
There are a number of significant reasons why it can make sense to host your own server.
Performance: In a typical office, much of the communication flow is internal. When you install your own server, e-mail and files exchanged between employees never leave the premises but are routed internally. This can result in significant time and cost savings compared to routing everything through an ISP.
Security: Every time you send information outside your network, you increase the risk of being hacked. When you host your server internally all internal traffic stays internal. This can significantly reduce the risk of intrusion.
Cost: While the prices charged by ISPs to host your e-mail and web site vary from region to region, there can be a significant cost savings in hosting your own server.
No product can ever be 100-per-cent secure. That said, SaIG'way has taken great pains to ensure that our product is as secure as we can make it, which is why we feel comfortable recommending it for most offices. For example, SaIG'way:
Yes -- the SaIG'way server and gateway includes a full firewalling configuration. This includes IPChains rules on top of IP masquerading, for services which are only accessible via the internal LAN. In addition, all non-essential network services are disabled, TCP wrappers are enabled, server programs are configured to communicate only with machines on the local network (where that is appropriate), sendmail has been replaced with qmail to increase security and performance, and all remote login facilities are disabled.
Yes. The SaIG'way server and gateway provides several different ways to access your server from a computer on your internal network or outside your site on the Internet. All of these operations are easily configured from the web-based SaIG'way manager.
If you plan to access your SaIG'way server remotely, we strongly recommend that you use a secure form of authentication and encryption. One option is ssh (secure shell), which provides a secure, encrypted way to login to a remote machine across a network or to copy files from a local machine to a server. The SaIG'way server provides both the ssh client programs as well as an ssh server daemon and supports both the SSH1 and SSH2 protocols. A number of different companies provide ssh client software for Windows or Macintosh. Examples include SecureCRT, F-Secure and SSH Secure Shell from SSH Communications, the original developers of the secure shell application and protocol. SSH Secure Shell for Workstations is available free of charge for non-commercial use, including use by universities, charities and public libraries.
In addition, the SaIG'way server and gateway allows the creation of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) using the Point-to-Point Tunnelling Protocol (PPTP), which was developed by an industry group consisting of Microsoft and several other remote access companies. A VPN is a private network of computers that uses the public Internet to connect some nodes. If you have a remote Windows system (for instance, a laptop or a home computer) that has access to the Internet, you can use PPTP to quickly and securely access the information stored on your SaIG'way server.
A third method of accessing your server remotely is telnet. However, allowing public telnet access greatly reduces the security of your server. For that reason, we recommend that you avoid enabling telnet unless absolutely necessary, and then only for as long as required.
The GPL is a "free" license giving users the right to modify source code and redistribute it as they see fit. (You can read more about the GPL at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.) One of the main objectives of the GPL is to ensure that open source software continues to benefit from the input of a broad community of talented developers.
Unless you plan to make changes to the source code itself, the GPL has no effect on your use of the product.
The SaIG'way server includes a DNS server for your local network. With some customization, it is possible to run a public DNS server on SaIG'way, and many users have done so. But unless you really know what you are doing, you'll create a security vulnerability. (This applies to any server, not just SaIG'way.) Recently there have been a large number of reported DNS attacks on servers running various operating systems. These are possible with a public DNS server, but are not possible with SaIG'way because of the way we configure the caching and local DNS server.
SaIG'way does not currently support FrontPage extensions, although we have heard of people successfully adding this functionality to the SaIG'way server.
We are considering support for FP extensions in future versions, although we are inclined against it due to the inherent security risks. FrontPage is a very large, unauditable application with a history of security vulnerabilities.
If you want to proceed on your own to add FP extensions, we suggest you consult this Microsoft howto:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q202/1/98.ASP?LNG=ENG&SA=ALLKB
In addition, Ready-to-Run Software has a page with information about support for FP on Linux/UNIX servers:
The SaIG'way jukebox is one of a growing number of add-on modules for the SaIG'way server.
ASP is a Microsoft proprietary technology designed to run on Microsoft's web server products. It is not available on the SaIG'way server and gateway. However, there are a number of extremely powerful web scripting languages and interfaces available as open source software. They include:
The SaIG'way server and gateway comes with build-in support for mod_perl and the PHP scripting language. Many programmers consider either of these alternatives far superior to ASP.
If you still require support for ASP on your SaIG'way server, you can also consider one of the following options:
If you choose one of the latter options, you will need to the read the SaIG'way documentation carefully, and integrate the application into the SaIG'way environment.
Your supplier can provide a boot floppy.
SaIG'way does plan to move to 2.4, but we believe it is too early and see no pressing need. In any event, for 1 and 2 CPU machines, it wouldn't make much of a difference to performance.
Users who attempt to upgrade to the 2.4 series themselves will encounter multiple complications: