Hardware Firewall suggestions?

[grs]

I want to get a dedicated hardware Firewall and I would like some suggestions, no need to have routing or switching abilites just firewall. I've looked into putting SmoothWall on to an old PC but thats too big and noisy for my setup.

[SavageBasher]

A smoothwall is far from a hardware firewall. True hardware ones cost a pretty penny. And don't forget that a smoothwall can run on just about anything that has 2 nics, it doesn't have to be a full fledged computer

[imposter]

firewalls do cost a lot of money. If i were you i would get a smoothwall and replace all the fans with yateloons and you will notice its not too load.

[Mpegger]

Do what I did. Since Smoothwall will run on anything, use a older gen processor that doesnt require a loud fan (or a fan at all) to keep cool, and modify your psu.

I use a P4 Celeron (I think a 1.6D) with this Zalman heatsink (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118103). Since Smoothwall isnt using the CPU @ 100% all the time, this is more then adequate, and a extreamly quiet setup.

Any old PSU will work too so long as you'r willing to modify it. I took the noisy 80mm fan out of the PSU, and cut a hole big enough on the bottom to fit a 120mm fan. Much quieter (I cant even hear it unless my ear is next to it), flows more air, and because a smoothwall box doesnt require power hungry components to run, the air oushed out is barely higher then room temps.

The only audible part of my smoothwall box, is the hard drive, which is a old WD 1.2GB drive.

[SavageBasher]

P4 celly? Christ, mine runs a 500mhz celly and rarely sees a load over 0.1

[Mpegger]

I know its overkill. Had it on a P1 233 before, but the mb was acting abit flaky (wouldnt see all the mem I had installed). Not only that, but the hs/fan combo I have for that cpu is just too damn loud, no matter where in the room it might be. I have a couple of other older boxes, but for various reasons, I wasnt able to use them. One board appears dead (RIP Abit BE6), another wont see more then 2 nics :confused:, and the 486DX4 100 is just too damn old to support any of the nics I have (not to mention I havent powered it up in who knows how long :beer: ).

I also like the speed of the P4 Cele when accessing the built in Smoothwall website management, as well as the speed when running all the services plus additional add-ons. And I also had more then enough extra ram sitting around to use on that P4 board to give Smoothwall more then enough extra breathing room and increase cache size on some of the services. That and it was just sitting gathering dust since I was using it as a server to begin with.

[smokie mcpott]

i got ipcop runnin on a dell optiplex 667mhz p3(i think 128mb ram)wd 6gb hd...its pretty much silent
its extremely small and quiet, much better than the 1.8celery i had it runnin on before

[Adragontattoo]

When I get home I will try to get pics and full specs of smoothie.

Though I am not taking it down to do it

[Skeith]

if your worried about noise run it on a PII era CPU or celeron. The ones with the passive heatsinks. Use a flash drive for an HDD and the only sound you will have is the PSU fan. You can build your own case or modd it into the case of say,.. and old DVD player and it will take up alot less space.

[Xenocide]

P4 celly? Christ, mine runs a 500mhz celly and rarely sees a load over 0.1

500mhz Celly? Christ, mine has run on a 100mhz P1 and rarely every sees load over .7

Sorry had to do it :santa:

[SavageBasher]

500mhz Celly? Christ, mine has run on a 100mhz P1 and rarely every sees load over .7

Sorry had to do it :santa:

try to pingflood with it and see what happens. :beer:

[hkgonra]

500mhz Celly? Christ, mine has run on a 100mhz P1 and rarely every sees load over .7

Sorry had to do it :santa:

Try any kind of content filtering on it and watch it slow down to a crawl.
I had a dansguardian mod on mine which was a p3 500 with 512mb of ram. I had to turn it off.

[Mpegger]

Hence why I prefer the P4 Cele over the P1 233. Advanced Web Proxy, URL Filter and Snort run smooth as silk. :beer:

[grs]

OK, I just tried Smoothwall but I think either my hard drive is dead or there is a compatability problem with the network. I'll have to wait till I can get more parts to try again.

[smokie mcpott]

are you trying smoothwall 3.0?... if you are, you need smoothwall 2.0 sp1 instead...
or try ipcop