[TriLUG] Best appliance for Linux firewall?

[Greg Brown]

The price of the Soekris hardware does add up but I cannot state how happy
I have been with every extra investment I've made with this hardware.
 After nearly 10 years of near constant 24x7 operation my old Net-4501 is
still working though the limited ram is showing up with the latest m0n0wall
builds.  I'm going to upgrade to a 5501 because I am losing bandwidth, none
that I need at home but it bothers me I don't have hardware to fully
utilize what I am paying for (I live alone, generally only have one device
running at a time and never have issues streaming HD content from Netflix,
etc).  I really can't stress how happy I've been with these devices.  Of
the seven I've put in service all are working today save one I sold a while
back (which may be running.... somewhere).  As far as OpenBSD goes I do not
know how that would be installed but check out pfsense, which is based on
m0n0wall but provides access to a lot of the features that make BSD so
attractive: http://www.pfsense.org/.

Greg


On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 4:33 PM, Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com>wrote:

> On Sat, 10 Aug 2013 15:58:49 -0400
> bak <bak at picklefactory.org> wrote:
>
> >
> > On Aug 10, 2013, at 12:05 PM, Sean Alexandre <sean at alexan.org> 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 was salivating over that until I added up all their nickel and diming:
>
> * HD mounting kit
> * HD
> * USB->serial adapt laptop to act as serial console
> * Case
> * Power supply
>
> I'm also wondering exactly how I'd install OpenBSD on it without a
> CDROM drive -- I know how to thumb-driveize Ubuntu, but OpenBSD might
> be a different matter.
>
> But yeah, that looks really tempting, especially considering it would
> replace a full size desktop running 24/7, it's got to pay for itself in
> a reasonable amount of time.
>
> Thanks,
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
> Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance
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