Sounds like you talked yourself out of the appliance :-) Maybe I'm reading it the wrong way.
<SNIP>
There is an argument here for "simple tools that do only one thing, but do it well."
I use an old compaq desktop as my firewall, iirc it was around $40 used, got a few $15 NICs, "Absolute OpenBSD" book and installed OpenBSD. For the price, you can't beat it. If you want a multi function router, BSD supports VPN, DHCP, DNS, Snort, or whatever you might want to run on such a device. Most importantly, 1 remote hole in 7 years (in the default install) is a better track record than any other firewall that I've heard of...
just $.02 :)
--mike
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