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Turning old PC into a router / firewall

Forum General Networking : General Gateways, Routers and Firewalls - Turning old PC into a router / firewall

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-Mithridate-   06-07-2006 at 02:27:55 AM

Hello fellow computer chums.

Im interested in turning my old Pentium 2 into a hardware firewall (primarily) and router (otherwise It’ll just collect dust).

I was wondering if anyone had any experience of using an older system for firewalls/routers; what program they used and how easy they found it. Ive heard of programs Coyote Linux, m0n0wall, Smoothwall & ClarkConnect. But I don’t have the foggiest what the differences are, or the pro’s and con’s.


Any suggestions or experience shared would be grateful.

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MikeyP410   06-07-2006 at 04:04:52 PM
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On this forum a couople months back there was a Linux based firewall/router called IP-COP. Check the archives that should help you out.

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MikeyP410   06-07-2006 at 04:06:52 PM
- 0 +

On this site not forum.

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EvilC0P   06-07-2006 at 08:25:24 PM
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i personnaly use fedora Core 4. ( you can use any Linux distribution )
console mode only ( this is a server )
it's a router, DDNS server and DHCP server, firewall and file server. for my windows xp machines.

been working good for a long time no problem. that i even forgot whats the spec of the machine. but something like a P2 500 with 768 ram i think.

and i have no problem whatsoever in running anything tru it.
compare to that old piece of s**t linksys wanna be router i had...

Linux services you would shoudl look into : IPtables (firewall is a little bit complicated...) , to enable the box to be a router is a simple command ( dont remember it). if you want file server/sharing, Samba you need.

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folken   06-12-2006 at 07:56:26 PM
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I've been using clarkconnect for several years now and I have been very happy with it. I host many services from my house and clark makes it VERY easy. If all you need is a firewall/router any of those distros will work just fine (m0n0wall, smoothwall, clarkconnect, ipcop, etc). If you want to host a website, email server, vpn server, or many other things clarkconnect is a very good option :)
Clarkconnect probably has the highest system requirements of the bunch but if you only have a couple users (or arn't running all the services) a PII will work just fine. My friend's clark box is a PII 233 with 256mb of ram and it works like a champ.

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