gentoo-sources vs. vanilla-sources?

[dj_farid]

I have a gentoo server with two NICs that does NAT, iptables, traffic shaping, FTP, NFS, samba, DHCP and probably some other stuff thatI have forgotten about The system is headless, no xorg or any of that.
The hardware is a P3 550 MHz with 512MB RAM, BX chipset, 2 pata disks.

I am running the stable vanilla kernel on it right now. But I have some issues with iptables and traffic shaping on it. I think that these issues would disappear if I had a later kernel. (It's a problem with some kind of mismatch with l7-protocol, iptables ipp2p and versions)...

I can't decide if I should go for the unstable arch kernel or the stable gentoo-sources kernel, or maybe the unstable gentoo-sources, or maybe even some other kernel. Please help me decide.

What would the advantages and disadvantages be with all the different kernels on my setup?

[Sachankara]

Well, if you ever try to use Device Mapper and LVM, stick with the Gentoo patched kernel, as the vanilla kernel contains only the minimum functionality, which is in my own opinion, totally worthless. The vanilla kernel doesn't even have support for "crypt target".

Also, since it's a server, perhaps you should use a hardened kernel instead with chroot/fork bomb/stack smashing attack/etc protections? "hardened-sources" is not bleeding edge, but it isn't very old either. 2.6.17-r1 is the latest stable version. You only have to recompile all packages if you want absolutely all security features.
_________________
Gentoo Hardened Linux 2.6.21 + svorak (Swedish dvorak)

[dj_farid]

The hardened kernel looks interesting, but I would like to go to 2.6.18. That's where my version problems will probably disappear.

Yesterday I went from gentoo-sources to ck-sources on my workstation. It feels a little snappier.

Right now I think that I might go from vanilla-sources to the gentoo-sources on the server.

Is there anything to gain in using ck-sources on a server (besides the "not stable" factor)? Is anyone doing this?
I read about a USE flag you could use for ck to understand that it is a server and not a workstation.