Re: CPU speed for Linux Firewall/NAT solution

On Fri, 20 Jun 2003 13:32:07 -0400, "Hugo Drax" <hugodrax@nsa.gov>
wrote:

>
>"David" <thunderbolt01@netscape.net> wrote in message
>news:z%EIa.731513$Si4.869073@rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.at t.net...
>> John Smith wrote:
>> > Good point, but what does the maintanence cost for a PIX? Is
>> > it cheap?
>>
>> You could get a PII Motherboard for about US $90 stick around
>> 256MB of RAM in it, along with a 450MHz processor and have a
>> pretty powerful firewall if you need one that powerful. You
>> wouldn't even need a hard drive just run it off CD and use the
>> floppy for the firewall config.
>>
>
>still better buying VS re-inventing the wheel and I would never offer a
>homegrown setup to a customer. the linksys is a good box for 100 dollars
>which support VPN inbound and acts like a headend. Its simply not worth the
>hassle. The pix is good if you want all the fancy bells and whistles.
Have one of those firewall in a box setups. Its now acting as a dumb
switch and printserver because it couldn't be reprogrammed to handle
the latest twist earthlink - DSL through at me (couldn't send emails
longer than 25 lines). So I have an old P133 w/64 MB and two ethernet
cards as a filewall (scrap hardware) No problem keeping up with dsl
here. Canned systems are fine and cheaper, but eventually they will
have to be replaced because they can't be reprogrammed to meet the new
needs Just my $0.02 worth.

>
>PIX 501 3des - 400 dollars
>linksys BEFVP41 3des - 100 dollars
>homegrown setup 400 dollars
>
>PII mboard 90 dollars
>256mb of ram 30 dollars
>case 20 dollars
>cdromdrive 35 dollars
>2 nic cards 20 dollars
>floppy 15 dollars
>cpu 40 dollars
>time spent 150 dollars (time spent putting box/software together
>etc 50/hr 3hours)
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>--
>total 400 dollars
>
>