Smooth wall vs a $80 router

[Dice144]

As the title says I been fooling around with the idea of replacing my old Linksys 54g with a extra PC I just got. Basically it is an old AMD 64. Thinking of buying 2 NICs and installing Linux/smoothwall.

Or I could just buy a $80 new router. I want my desktop to stay wired. I will have 3 laptops/tablets on my wireless and 2 desktops on the wired connection.

Can anyone recommend if smoothwall is worth the extra setup/security?

 

[notposting]

Power usage will be pretty extreme compared to a router...I ended up switching from pfsense on a P3 to a WRT54GL running Tomato. Been steady as a rock so far...have a couple Gb switches for wired transfers between devices.

 

[drebo]

Your power usage on the Smoothwall will catch up in less than 6 months time and you'll end up paying a lot more over the life.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

The power consumption is definitely higher, but you get the flexibility of a "real" firewall, plus you gain experience by setting it up. I also doubt you will have the problems many (bit torrenting) users have of limited number of connections supported due to slow cpu and low memory on soho routers.

So, if you dont care to learn it or dont hit walls with the cheapie routers by all means save yourself the hassle and use a prebuilt

 

[lord_emperor]

Smoothwall is really, really good. It's also very easy.

But an Athlon 64 is going to use 100x as much power as a router; if that's not a concern go with Smoothwall.

Compromise: DD-WRT?

 

[alyarb]

http://www.icemonkey.com/netgear-wn...idth-with-simultaneous-high-speed-connections

 

[JackMDS]

I could just buy a $80 new router. I want my desktop to stay wired. I will have 3 laptops/tablets on my wireless and 2 desktops on the wired connection.

This is Not the kind of info that explaina or justify why you need a computer as a Router.

If there is No functional actionable reasons for such use, you simply wasting your money.

 

[Dice144]

I should have explained more. I use to play around in Linux with Linux Mint and Ubuntu. I like to learn new OS when board.

I can afford a brand new ITX low power PC or a $80-150 router. The learning alone even if I switch back to a prebuilt was what I was aiming for.

Also an updated found out the AMD 64 was caked with dust and at some point (this was my Dads PC I built him years ago) died. I was hoping it was just a PSU issue but after some testing the board is fried.

[/IMG]

 

[Dice144]

I ended up getting a MBP 13" for the battery life and to learn the OS.