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Ask Slashdot: Advice On Building a Firewall With VPN Capabilities?
An anonymous reader writes "I currently connect to the internet via a standard router, but I'm looking at bulking up security. Could people provide their experiences with setting up a dedicated firewall machine with VPN capabilities? I am a novice at Linux/BSD, so would appreciate pointers at solutions that require relatively little tweaking. Hardware-wise, I have built PC's, so I'm comfortable with sourcing components and assembling into a case. The setup would reside in my living room, so a quiet solution is required. The firewall would handle home browsing and torrenting traffic. Some of the questions knocking around in my head: 1. Pros and cons of buying an off-the-shelf solution versus building a quiet PC-based solution? 2. Software- versus hardware-based encryption — pros and cons? 3. What are minimum requirements to run a VPN? 4. Which OS to go for? 5. What other security software should I include for maximum protection? I am thinking of anti-virus solutions."
This will let you connect to vpns and such http://www.buffalotech.com/products/wireless
or for a more geek solution https://www.pfsense.org/
Buy a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite.
I love me some pfSense. We use it at the office and it handles everything we can throw at it (including VPN/IPSec between offices to backfeed high bandwidth security video). It is also light weight enough to work in a home environment on minimal hardware.
Their hardware is both overpriced and well-made. For our small branch offices their embedded devices (such as https://store.pfsense.org/VK-T...) are better than what we could create on our own in low volume and a lot less work. For larger branch offices we will stick pfSense in virtual machine with whatever else they have running. It does well as a VM, too.
Cheers,
Matt
I picked up an Asus ac66u last year (there are later models and I suspect cheaper ones in the range that are similar) - and it supports VPN (amongst all manner of other stuff).
Just have an extra page on the GUI to allow you to generate an openVPN cert and account privs. Pretty useful as means when I'm travelling I can just seamlessly add my phone to the home network.
I'd thought about buying something dedicated (well was more a NAS project, I thought I could add this to) - but unless you've got some complex needs or high volume - I strongly suspect I'd make more of a mess (both function and security) trying to set it up myself.
Grab a cheap Mikrotik RB750 or similar and you'll find you have an out-of-the-box solution that's feature-rich, supported, and easy to use.
"Oh no... he found the
You realize that DD-WRT runs on far more hardware than the WRT-54x series of routers, right? In fact, I'm running it on a Netgear WNDR3700 V4 (a *far* more capable router than the WRT-54G). I'm barely using any of its features, however, it's interface is far more responsive than the Netgear "genie" interface, and it no longer randomly resets its network connections.
In this case, I'd say a little *research* into a particular topic, before you comment, goes a long way... ;)
bork bork bork!