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Ask Slashdot: Advice On Building a Firewall With VPN Capabilities?

Posted by timothy on from the thick-pipes-and-sturdy-valves dept.

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."

3 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. geek or not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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/

  2. Re:geek or not ~ pfSense by InitZero · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  3. Re:DD-wrt by michrech · · Score: 4, Informative

    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... ;)

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