• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Making a hardware firewall...

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

Venesectrix

Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2003
I need a good OS (preferably linux-based) to create a hardware firewall out of one of my old computers. I've got an old 486 laptop and a pentium I (48MB RAM), so I think I'll be using the pentium. What do I need to configure my firewall? Do I need to buy more network cards or anything like that? We've got a cable modem connected to a wireless router by a cable (I think it's CAT cable, but I don't know the number), which then routes its signal to our computers (2 currently, though once I get another wireless card it's going to be 3). Would the firewall go between the modem and the router? Or between the router and the computer? What are your suggestions for a good firewall linux distro?



Here's a crude diagram of what our setup looks like:

|
|_D__________
|
|--A----B---C
|___________E____|F

A: Cable connection from wall to modem
B: Modem (motorola surfboard)
C: Router, Dell 1184
D, E, and F : Computers
 
With that Dell router, a Linux-based firewall is redundant as far as security is concerned: all your hosts are already behind nat and thus nobody on the internet can touch them. Not unless you dmz or something.
 
I use ClarkConnect 2.0. It will do exactly what your looking for.

You will need atleast 2 NIC's in the gateway PC. One for incoming internet connection. And a second to go to your router. If you want to use your router as a DHCP server yet you'll have to disable the DHCP server on the gateway machine. And you'll have to disable the gateway feature in your router. So the config would go: .Modem---gateway/firewall PC---Router---network PC's

But IMHO the best option for this would be to let the Gateway/Firewall PC do all of this for you. And disable the gateway, and DHCP server on the router and use it strictly as a switch. Less chances of any sort of conflict I would think. Depending on what OS you choose for the gateway PC. It will most likely have NAT, DHCP, & Firewall. So it should cover everything for you.
Smoothwall is one that's pretty popular. Also ClarkConnect like I mentioned above. As well as Coyote Linux (sp?) which is a floppy based gatway/firewall OS, so you would'nt even need a harddrive.

Here's a list of the more common linux distro's for this purpose:

• Astaro Security Linux
• CensorNet
• ClarkConnect Broadband Getaway
• Devil-Linux
• IPCop Firewall
• Luinux
• Mandrake Security MNF
• Securepoint
• Sentry Firewall
• SmoothWall GPL
• TrX Live Firewall

Go here to read about them or download them
 
Last edited:
quick correction to the previous post, nitpicking really:D It's
Smoothwall Express now not GPL, and they've just relased version 2.0. I'll be installing it later today:D
 
Back