[Sussex] Firewall appliance recomendations

[Andy Smith]

On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 04:23:52PM +0100, Steven Dobson wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-08-10 at 13:56 +0100, Diego Moore wrote:
> > Anyone know of any Linux firewall appliances? I know I could build an
> > ITX system but I really would like to buy a decent appliance (3-4
> > Nics) which comes with hardware and maybe even software support.

[...]

> I use a Soekris (www.soekris.com) which I bought from www.kd85.com.  The
> systems are small and both the net4501 and net4801 come with three NICs
> one board.  Driver support is not a problem - a modern Linux kernel has
> support out of the box.

I too use a Soekris at home; they're lovely, if expensive devices.
Bear in mind that the CPU is not beefy and there is no packet
switching in ASIC like you have on cisco and similar hardware.  You
will do well to get more than 20Mbit through one of these before
you start adding the overheard of firewalling.  Don't expect to use
it as a VPN endpoint either unless you'll also buy a crypto card for
it.

You can buy rackmount kits for soekris if you decide to go down that
route.

Cheers,
Andy
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