DIY Router/Firewall

Anyone go down this road recently? I don't need software recs so much as hardware recs. I also would like to stay at <$100 and keep power consumption to around 20 watts. I know that may be asking a lot... It doesn't need WiFi built in, I can piggy back my WiFi bridge to it. Also I already have a two port pci ethernet card and a single port pci-x I could throw in there if it didn't have enough or any on board ports.

I recently fried my Asus router and don't feel like shelling out another $80, but I would like something a bit better than a $20 router. I haven't looked on ebay yet for any cheap second hand small form factor systems, but I'll do that tonight.

Only thing I have to say is it would be of relevent interest to keep up with the Raspberry Pi development. There is quite a few people interested in using it as a DIY firewall: http://www.raspberrypi.org/

Your best bet may be an Atom system. You can get the basic Intel motherboard [newegg.com] for ~ $75. I recently made one into a basic backup server for my mom's home business.

You may also want to consider a barebones system like this FoxConn system [newegg.com]. Add some memory and an HDD and you're good to go.

Quote from johnjackson000 : Only thing I have to say is it would be of relevent interest to keep up with the Raspberry Pi development. There is quite a few people interested in using it as a DIY firewall: http://www.raspberrypi.org/

Wow, been following Raspberry Pi for a potential XBMC system, but had no clue that people were doing firewalls!!!

Quote from kakomu : Your best bet may be an Atom system. You can get the basic Intel motherboard [newegg.com] for ~ $75. I recently made one into a basic backup server for my mom's home business. You may also want to consider a barebones system like this FoxConn system [newegg.com]. Add some memory and an HDD and you're good to go.

That doesn't seem too bad at all. I wish those Atom prices started coming down a bit. I'd like to see a basic Atom system in the $50 to $75 range.

Quote from kakomu : Your best bet may be an Atom system. You can get the basic Intel motherboard [newegg.com] for ~ $75. I recently made one into a basic backup server for my mom's home business. You may also want to consider a barebones system like this FoxConn system [newegg.com]. Add some memory and an HDD and you're good to go.

This would be it if you need something now. Lian Li makes some nice mini-itx cases..

Quote from brbubba : Wow, been following Raspberry Pi for a potential XBMC system, but had no clue that people were doing firewalls!!!

There's nothing concrete yet but there definitely is the demand and would be ideal for the price and power consumption. I want a Raspberry Pi for XBMC as well but it looks like hardware acceleration is going to be limited to what the Rasphberry Pi Foundation has licensed (MPEG-4 and H264.) Whether that is good enough remains to be seen..

Well I may be saved. I have a Lanner FW-7560 that I've had laying around for almost a year now. Picked it up on Ebay for a great price. Anyway I've never been able to get it working 100% because it's serial output only and a real pain in the rear. I've also been looking for a VGA adaptor for it for ages and nothing out there uses the same onboard pin config to 15 pin vga. In a last ditch effort I emailed the company and of course they sell them and they're only $10. So hopefully this will solve all my problems and I can just use this device as my router/firewall.

Thanks for the help guys!

Does the said Lanner device have an embedded OS or are you going to install?

Quote from beefcake78 : Does the said Lanner device have an embedded OS or are you going to install?

I have to install, that's been the main problem. The serial output works great until after the BIOS and POST screens go by; once it actually tries to boot something the serial ouput is useless. Typically speaking the boot will fail if you have serial ouput turned on all the time and if you turn it off the boot might succeed but you have no way of configuring it. So you basically have to have an OS preconfigured on a compact flash card or a sata 2.5" hard drive to allow access to a management page through one of the interfaces. Doing that is beyond both my patience level and expertise, so I was trying to find a VGA adaptor for the onboard header. Why they didn't build one in for the sake of a part worth a few bucks is beyond me.

Hadn't realized they worked this way. So you can run a linix firewall like PFsense or Endian? I wonder if anyone has already compiled a version for Lanner hardware?

Also I'm not saying you don't need a display for the header, but I've configured hundreds of cisco devices using the serial (console) cable. Granted, the cisco devices already have an OS!

Quote from beefcake78 : Hadn't realized they worked this way. So you can run a linix firewall like PFsense or Endian? I wonder if anyone has already compiled a version for Lanner hardware? Also I'm not saying you don't need a display for the header, but I've configured hundreds of cisco devices using the serial (console) cable. Granted, the cisco devices already have an OS!

You sure can! In fact a few adventurous souls on the pfsense forums have it running on Lanner hardware. I'm pretty sure they've used the embedded version of it which just limits the writes since most people are using CF cards on embedded platforms. The issue is preconfiguring the install image so you can write the image out to the CF card, plug it into the lanner, boot and immediately have access to the HTML interface on one of the ports.

Trust me I've tried. The serial console just outputs what the VGA display would normally output, but it typically fails because many of the distributions aren't setup to output to the serial console after the system has posted and it starts loading the OS. There are probably ways around this, but for $10 I'll just do it the old fashioned way.

That Lanner is pretty cool. Any idea how much you paid for it? And is it loud?

Quote from johnjackson000 : That Lanner is pretty cool. Any idea how much you paid for it? And is it loud?

I picked it up on ebay for about $110/$120. Considering that something with these features new would be over $300/$400 I was happy with the purchase. It even came with pfsense preinstalled and working, but I of course had to start tinkering!

Noise was definitely an issue! It had a CPU fan and two fans that vented air outside the case. At idle I'd say they sounded like a normal or slightly noisey desktop, but when they kicked in it sounded like the thing was ready for liftoff. I had to fix that of course and I replaced all the stock heatsinks with copper low profile heatsinks and removed the fans completely. I'd have to monitor the heat once it goes into production but after an hour or two running I didn't initially see any super high temperature conditions. The TDP on the 600mhz Celeron M is only 7W max, so it's not going to be throwing off tons of heat. There is one fan left in there for the power supply which should at least circulate some air through the box.

The only downside to the box is the size, it's almost 17" wide and almost 11" deep. However, the board itself is no more than 9" by 6", so there's a lot of extra room. Warranted the power supply is somewhat large and they do leave room for a 2.5" hard drive, but with the right design they could have easily squeezed it all into a 10"x10" or less footprint.

If you look hard enough there are plenty of neat units lurking on ebay. The hardest feature to find was probably the multiple GigE ports, which I really wanted so I didn't have to use an external switch. In retrospect though, a much smaller unit with only two ports and then an external switch wouldn't actually take up anymore room.

EDIT: BTW there are probably tons of other options out there. I stumbled across another platform people are using, the Neoware E100. Looks dirt cheap on ebay, <$20, but you have to get a right angle PCI riser, a PCI ethernet card and upgrade the Disk on Module unit to whatever the min install size of the OS is. It's a 1ghz VIA processor but it still should be as fast if not faster than any consumer router.

I did a quick search and didn't come up with anything. I guess I'll keep at it. Let us know how it goes for you.. I don't need a hardware firewall but for $100-150 I wouldn't mind getting one to tinker with lol.

Quote from johnjackson000 : I did a quick search and didn't come up with anything. I guess I'll keep at it. Let us know how it goes for you.. I don't need a hardware firewall but for $100-150 I wouldn't mind getting one to tinker with lol.

Try switching up search terms. I searched by "pfsense" which is a freeBSD distribution. You could also try "monowall" or "smoothwall" or any distro. Some ebayers try to include those as a selling point. Also don't discount certain items, there was one watchguard firewall a while back that people were turning into a home firewall with their own distro.

Yeah it's fun to tinker. Why can't we just leave well enough alone!!