I have a spare machine, a few questions about setting up a firewall

[XBoxLPU]

AMD XP 1700+ ( right now OCed to 2ghz )
128MB PC2100
Shuttle AN35/N Ultra Motherboard

I will still continue to use my Netgear WGR614 802.11g router. I just want a firewall sollution.

1.) Clack Connect, m0n0wall, or OpenBSD ?

2.) Will the onboard Nvidia lan be even detected ?

2b. If no, recommendations of a cheap PCI based lan card that will

3.) How many NICs will I need just for a firewall box?

Thanks

 

[Goosemaster]

Any Realtek based chipset should be fine.

Is the system posted your "spare machine?" :confsued;

That is major overkill for such a simple purpsoe. Perhaps isntall Astaro Linux which can provide you with many more options.

 

[Thoreau]

I second the Astaro recommendation. Bonus: if you intend to put the VPN (and plethora of other features) that Astaro has to use, you might actually not be going as far overboard as if you were to use something leaner such as Smoothwall.

Edit: I have found that IBM/Intel nics as well as older D-Link nics tend to work best in Linux firewall when it comes to detecting them without hassle.

 

[XBoxLPU]

Goose, yes spare machine. It was built for less then $175, mostly was being used for seti.

I added another question, thanks guys

Astaro Linux looks really good

 

[Goosemaster]

A firewall is basically an input/out box that serves to isolate one network from another.

If you are planning to have just one network, all you need is 2 NICs, one for your WAN , and one for your LAN.

You can add a multitude of other NICs to create different internal networks for isolation or management purposes, but that does not seem to be the case. 2 NICS will be fine.


BTW, an 1800XP+ machine with 512MB of ram can push analyze around 655Mbps of traffic using SPI and a few hundred Mbps of VPN traffic.

For reference, a Netgear Prosafe router can do about 1.5Mbps of traffic using SPI 😀

Trust me and go with astaro and 2 NICs. If you are going to hit it, hit it hard. :thumbsup: