I own a year-2000 Dell Dimension L PC (Celeron 533 MHz, 512 MB RAM, 10 GB HDD) that I'm not using. Due to some dissatisfaction I have with my DSL modem/router, I thought it might be a worthwhile learning exercise to set up this PC as a Linux router.
I have two main questions: Q1: Which distro to choose Q2: How do I proceed after the distro is installed I hope to attend Wednesday's meeting and will try to arrive well before 6 PM. Perhaps someone would be willing to discuss these questions with me at that time. Background: My Internet connection is 1 Mbps DSL. My LAN consists of two PC's. Usually only one PC is in use at a time. The LAN is wired only, no wireless. The main reason I'm considering a Linux router is to have a firewall external to my PC. My DSL modem/router (Westell 6100) offers a firewall. However, the firewall uses a proprietary interface (instead of iptables or pf) which is poorly documented and which I don't understand. Secondly, my DSL modem/router continually does network discovery. All day long it probes ports on my PC and these probes are intercepted and logged by iptables. Which distro?: pfsense seems tailor made for my needs. However it uses the pf firewall interface rather than iptables. I've invested a lot of effort trying to learn iptables. Chris Knadle installed Debian on his Alix router. However, Chris was already a long-term Debian user. Another possibility is the X86 port of DD-WRT. This seems more appropriate for a wireless LAN. A known disadvantage of using an old PC as a router is high power consumption. According to wikipedia, the TDP of the Celeron 533 MHz is 28 watts (not too bad). _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College Feb 1 - Home Networking Made Simple with Amahi Home Server Mar 7 - Desktop Shootout - 9th Anniversary of MHVLUG Apr 4 - An Intro to Chef
