[TriLUG] Consumer-grade dual-home Internet connection options

[Mike Seda]

I recommend purchasing a Netgear FVS336G dual-WAN firewall 
(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122213).

I have tried the Cisco RV042 
(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124160) in the 
past, but couldn't get the second WAN port to come up. It was a 
nightmare... RMA'd it. :-(

The Netgear FVS336G just worked though. And the configuration was simple.

BTW, my two WAN connections consisted of one 10M x 512K TW Cable 
connection and one 7M x 768K Verizon DSL connection.


John Broome wrote:
>
>
> Paul Bennett wrote:
>> Is it going to be a more-effective solution to drop a few bucks on 
>> the 2960 and go through the hassle of learning how to set it up (and 
>> then setting it up), or would I be better off putting a secured Linux 
>> distro (e.g. gentoo-hardened, or something) on the semi-spare PC and 
>> running the load-balancing via iproute2 and friends?
>>
>> Either way, I'm looking at a learning curve, and a good amount of 
>> time fannying around getting the damn thing working -- there's a good 
>> chance I'd spend almost as much cash on the PC-based solution getting 
>> good-quality network cards, and maybe fast HDD tech (though it seems 
>> like RAM and cores would be more important than disk IO).
>
> I'd skip the cisco, and skip using the quad core as a firewall.
>
> I'm agreeing with Ronald that pfsense is the way to go, but please 
> don't waste that desktop on something as piddly as a firewall.
>
> Grab an old dell off craigslist or ask here and use that.  Disk IO 
> doesn't matter a flip, cores don't matter, and ram marginally matters. 
> My old obsd firewall was run on a p200 with 32 mb ram and a 4gb drive 
> (only because that was the smallest I had around).
>
> Hell, you can run pfsense off a compact flash card or off a live CD 
> with the configs going onto a USB key.
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