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."

Comments

geek or not

[Anonymous Coward]

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/

DD-wrt

[everett]

That was easy.

Re:DD-wrt

[michrech]

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... ;)

What are you trying to do?

[RobbieCrash]

A VPN? To connect to where, from where? Are you doing this for something to do, or because you want to implement the best solution? Do you just want better router software?

Install Tomato or DD or OpenWRT or any one of their variants on your existing router.

Building your own in the name of security isn't going to work unless you really know what you're doing, which you said you don't in your summary. That sounds like a dick thing to say, but it's not. Security is difficult for people that know what they're doing, when people who don't try to DIY it, it's almost universally bad.

Re:geek or not ~ pfSense

[InitZero]

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

Re:geek or not ~ pfSense

[FatdogHaiku]

AskSlashdot is a joke. I mean all you get are jokes, or whatever comes up first in a basic Google search.

We are the Google algorithm...