Firewall Information and Hardware Setup Guide - Selecting Hardware for Your Firewall

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Selecting Hardware

The recommended hardware for a stock Smoothwall installation (a “vanilla Smoothie”—couldn’t help myself) is a 150Mhz Pentium, with 64MB RAM and 2GB hard drive.  The machine needs at least one Network Interface Card (NIC) for the GREEN network (more on that later) and if you are connecting to the internet via Point to Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) as we are, then a second NIC is needed.

Acquiring the appropriate hardware can be as easy as looking in your garage (in my case). You might also end up mining the local thrift stores, pawn shops, used computer stores, or going online and finding bargains on eBay or specialty sites such as RetroBox.

The system we are using for this article is a Pentium II 350MHz with 256MB RAM and a 4GB hard drive.  A comparable system can be had from RetroBox for around $30 excluding shipping.  It’s a little overpowered for a vanilla setup, but I plan on adding some mods to it later that will require the additional oomph.

The important components are the processor and the amount of RAM available.  My current Smoothie is running off a 1.5GB hard drive, but has 512MB of RAM.  Unlike Windows, the Linux-based OS in Smoothwall will utilize nearly all the RAM before it will write to the swap partition on the hard drive.

Most mainstream PCI-slot NICs are covered by the Smoothwall OS. Some older ISA/EISA cards might work, but your best bet would be to stick with the PCI-slot.  In most applications, a 10Mbs NIC will do for the RED interface (the internet); generally, 100Mbs wouldn’t help throughput any unless you are using a T1 line.  The 100Mbs card might make things move smoothly on the local network for GREEN, however.

Also needed for initial installation is a CDROM (I borrowed one from another of my systems), a keyboard, and a monitor.  The installation requires VGA-capable video, so any graphics card will do.

Next: Firewall Setup and Configuration >>
 

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· Many of us have a system or two we really don't know what to do with-- a Pentium or...    · It's a great article D1. I am just waiting for my 'inferior' box to come back to me....    · Good question, Tejas. It's a limited-scope live CD, which means you could boot it...    · Ok. Probably the last question.. ;)My computer sits behind a wireless router...    · Another good question.Hardware firewall (the one in the router) provides a solid...   >>> Post your comment now!