[TriLUG] Best appliance for Linux firewall?

Sean Alexandre sean at alexan.org
Sat Aug 10 17:43:39 EDT 2013


On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 03:58:49PM -0400, bak wrote:
> > I've been experimenting with this. I haven't found my ideal setup yet,
> > though.  Right now I'm running an Intel Atom box (2 cores) with 2 NICs on
> > board, and a PCI card with 2 more NICs (for a WAN, LAN, and DMZ.) It's more
> > than powerful enough, but consumes about 100w of power. I'd like to find
> > something smaller, that uses more like 30w (similar to a small home
> > router.) 
> > 
> > Ideally I'd like to find a box that: * Runs Debian with no binary blobs.
> > * Has 3 NICs * Wireless * Low power * Low noise (no fans)
> 
> Soekris 5501?
> 
> It's x86, so Debian should be easy enough.  Says it draws 20W.
> 
> http://soekris.com/products/net5501.html
> 
> I've had an Atom D525 for a couple years and it's never drawn more than 60W
> according to my kill-a-watt. I think the CPU draws <20W even when busy. Have
> you got some full-height 10k drives in there or something? :)

Yes, it's got a 3.5" 7200 RPM hard drive. I should really replace it with an
SSD drive.  That would probably bring it down by 20W or so.

The power supply is probably taking more than it should too. It's a 200W supply.
It was the smallest I could find, for the 1U case it's in. So that's probably
another 20W or so easy...and probably more like 40W...

If I had this to do this over again, I would have skip the 1U case and just put
in a small ATX case so I could have more options for power supplies.

That Soekris box looks pretty nice, though. I'd want to take a closer look at
that, and the MiraBox.



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