Quote:
Originally Posted by DJOtaku
Question is - what hardware do people usually use for this?
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Use an old computer (can be as old as ten years!), put in a second NIC, a working CD drive, possibly a hard drive (most firewall distros don't need one), possibly a floppy drive for configuration (some firewall distros still use those), put in as much RAM as it may possibly take (but normally, even as little as 64MB or 128MB will suffice). If you're eco-aware, use a small power supply. That's about it. I ran something like that on an old
Compaq Presario, one of the very crappy ones, and it worked without real issues (except for the fact that the box in question was half-gone when I started using it - and for some stupid reason, even without load, it got ridiculously hot). Another, bigger box worked without any issue whatsoever for two years - but it was a bit too big and expensive (power-wise) for the task, just like you said.
If you can find a very old laptop that can take a PCMCIA or USB NIC (or two if it doesn't come with one) that's supported, that might also fit the bill, and it won't take a lot of power.
If you don't want to go for old hardware, your EEE PC (the box, not the netbook, I assume) idea is not bad, too - but it'd be almost a pitty...
M.
