Originally posted by: b4u
Hi,
Don't know if anyone posted something about it, but I recently have found a nice piece of free software.
m0n0wall
If you have an old piece of hardware (like a pentium dropped on your basement), you can bring it to life as a router/firewall black box for your internet connection.
As a normal router, if your PC has 2 network interface cards, you can setup one as WAN and the other as LAN, and of you go, with maximum firewall security. It only took me 15 minutes of preparation and configuration (with the Quick Guide available online), to get it up and running. On a system with NO hard drive ... the OS was booted from CD-ROM, and the configuration saved on a XML file on a floppy disk. Couldn't me more clean.
The software is based on a stripped down version of FreeBSD, has a startup console for configuration of basic aspects (which interface is WAN and which is LAN, and also DHCP server and ranges if you want to, also the password for the web gui configuration), has a PHP server to deliver a nice web interface to all extra configuration, and you can configure many aspects, like Firewall Inbound/Outbound, NAT, DNS (forwarder & dynamic), DHCP, Wireless config, VPN config (protocols and stuff related), ...
All I can say is that I test it for a small period of time, and already I'm impressed with it. I have a small network to config and share a connection, and given an old piece of equipment, I'll create a "black box" that'll share my web connection providing many great security options and being easy to setup, config and maintain. And I'll just save some money on some router, and the process of choosing which one has the features I need now and will probably need in the future (like for example VPN).
Nice Software!