[TriLUG] VPN (router) recommendation

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:23:38 -0400
Matt Flyer <matt at noway2.thruhere.net> wrote:

> Good Evening Trilug,
> 
> I am looking for a recommendation for a router, specifically for the 
> purpose of providing VPN access for one to six users.  I would like
> to find something in stock locally (tomorrow), at a price point of
> about ~$200 or less.  It will be used to connect to a VLAN with DHCP,
> mostly via Window's clients because of dependency on IE. Ideally,
> users will be able to authenticate to the Windows domain, though I am
> not sure off hand how this would work.
> 
> Any suggestions or recommendations would be really appreciated.

Here's how you can get it tonight for zero dollars...

1) Grab an ancient computer from your garage. I'd say a Pentium III
   with 512MB and a 2GB drive would probably be good enough.
2) Cannibalize a second wired NIC from an even older computer.
3) Download OpenBSD and install it on the old computer, CLI only.
4) Make it into a PF firewall. See this:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/pf/

For lighter electrical usage and better use of space, make the old
computer a laptop and use a USB NIC dongle for the Internet side, with
the laptop's 100MB for the LAN side. 

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance