I'm looking at building a router and firewall using an APU 1D4 (dual core AMD Geode with 4GB RAM). I liked the looks of pfsense, but I find the wireless support a little bit lacking. I've heard people say they prefer separate wireless access points, but I'd prefer not to add another box and expense if I don't have to. This is for a small home network that includes a minecraft server. The minecraft server is for only two or three friends on a whitelist.

I know I could just buy a wireless router for less money, but I'd like to build my own for the fun of tinkering with it and learning.

I was thinking about going with a minimal Slackware install that I could ssh into, run a dhcp server, iptables, routing, etc... I assume that paring down unneeded packages at install would improve security, as well as compiling a custom kernel, no? Anywhere that I might find a list of which packages I should or should not have installed? I'd like something reasonably secure but not to the point of being paranoid, as long as it is more reliable than a consumer grade router and at least a little more secure.

I assume I'd be using iptables, dhcpd, and hostapd. Correct me if I'm wrong. Also a few questions:

- Would I need to use route in addition?
- How would using an mini pcie card or two in the alix/apu be different from setting up an ethernet to wifi access point on a raspberry pi using hostapd and bridge-utils?

Have you checked out Endian Firewall?

http://www.endian.com/us/community/d.../#.VSL9PPnF-KI

I did take a look at Endian, but it doesn't look like the free version supports wireless. I still prefer the idea of building something from scratch. I've taken the time to get through a couple of iptables tutorials, and I think it'll suit my needs just fine.

As far as paring down the install, do you think skipping the x and kde packages and turning off unneeded services would be enough, or should I really aim for something better than that?