<html dir="ltr"><head></head><body style="text-align:left; direction:ltr;"><div>Not that this is all that pertinent to today's hardware/distros, but...</div><div>Many years ago I used a really early version of Fedora (manually configured iptables) on a 486 class PC with, at most, 512MB of RAM.</div><div>If I recall I was on a synchronous 128Kbit connection before broadband was available in this community.</div><div>The distro I used actually fit on a floppy, so after bootstrapping from the floppy to RAMfs, I popped it out.</div><div>Uptime for that before retiring it was well over 1000 days.</div><div><br></div><div>I also tried Untangle, and Nitix, and some other ones which have been lost to the dustbin of my memory.</div><div><br></div><div>Today I use the relatively inexpensive Ubiquity EdgeRouter Pro with 8 independently configurable interfaces - rack mountable, small footprint, robust, easy to configure, and high throughput. It has some nice observability tools built-in (I can watch my Comcast connection go out and come back), and after putting the Comcast modem in bridge mode, my EdgeRouter is "on the Internet" so it can be a secure endpoint for me to VPN back into my LAN. All with very little configuration.</div><div><br></div><div>I certainly hear you about reusing old hardware. I was there but aging like I have, I tend to donate the old hardware and purchase fit-for-purpose equipment for my use cases.</div><div><br></div><div>Let us know what you end up setting up.</div><div><br></div><div>On Fri, 2020-04-17 at 08:51 -0500, Brian Wall wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex; border-left:2px #729fcf solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto">Hi all,<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I have an older piece of gear with an Intel Core2 proc, 2 gigs of RAM, and a multitude of interfaces. I've been wanting to turn this into a firewall appliance.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I'm wanting to use 5 or 6 different interfaces (LAN, WAN, DMZ, Guest WIFI, IoT, Lab). I'm finding that the old standbys, IPcop and its sort of replacement IPfire don't handle that number of interfaces and all the filtering I want.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I've played with pfSense, and it's OK, but limited in its feature set. I really like Untangle, but it insistently demands 6GB of RAM and not 1MB less. This box is finicky enough that I don't really have the desire to find enough RAM and make the box happy about it.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"> So.. What else is out there that people like? Do people still roll their own with iptables, pf, or whatever the latest thing is?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Yes, I suppose I could replace the box, but it's a 1U appliance and designed for this kind of thing.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I'm open to suggestions.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Thanks,</div><div dir="auto">Brian</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"> </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div></div>
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