home network security help..

[bxa121]

hey guys, wondering if you can give us any help on this...
i have three computers connected to a router and thats connected to the modem.
we have mac adress control for protection and the routers firewall is on.
we also have sygate personal firewall and zone alarm on each computer as software firewalls.
antivirus protection is grisoft AVG free edition and sophos antivirus
anti-spy is spybot and spysweeper
and regprot is the last line of defense protecting the registry.

ok now what i wanna do is change my router, its crummy and doesnt give me a lot of options... so i want to build a hardware router from an old computer. and then put a linux distro thats used for hardware routers.. something like smoothewall is what i have in mind.
we dont download anything in our house and i wanna change that so iw as thinking of getting another old computer that has stuff like morpheus and k-lite and all the other downloaders and just let that get screwed up... of course itll be put in demilitarised zone for this..

but i dont want me hardware router to be cost expensive as itll be running 24/7 so what i wanna know from you guys is how do i reduce the power output of the power supply so that it wont take up so much power and noise?

plus i was wondering if you guys have any ideas for home network storage..
oh and how i can tighten router security.. mac adress checking is not the best..
thanks
bxa121

[Daveb2012]

I would just get a small PSU low watage under 250 and set energy star settings to conserve power. as far as storage maybe some large capacity IDE HDD's? or a couple sata 250's. Also just run stock cooling if your concerned about noise.

You dont need much processoring power for this either you may consider getting a P3 and cheap mobo. smooth wall is good idea too, did you get that from: http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10165_7-5465494.html

[smokey]

A PIII is even overkill for a firewall. A 386 with a math coproc will do just fine... really any functional equipment you have laying around will work marvelously. Personally, depending on the hardware you have, I would choose a BSD and use pf and extremely strong permissions. Although you really shouldn't be providing services from a box running a firewall, you could conceivably offer NFS or SMB shares.

[gillll]

http://smoothwall.org

hehe 40mb firewall booted from cd :D include os

install it on a p2 with 64 ram and u got it .

[Daveb2012]

A PIII is even overkill for a firewall. A 386 with a math coproc will do just fine... really any functional equipment you have laying around will work marvelously. Personally, depending on the hardware you have, I would choose a BSD and use pf and extremely strong permissions. Although you really shouldn't be providing services from a box running a firewall, you could conceivably offer NFS or SMB shares.


true but P3s are like 10.00 now or less, and they are much more robust then any 386 or even P1, not to mention consume much less power at lower voltage. which he said was important. I think some 386's ran at up to 5v :eek:

[smokey]

My statement was intended to express the scalability of the software, not make hardware recommendations. The hardware could be nearly anything from a 386SX to an XScale to the latest and greatest dual core... it really doesn't matter for a firewall, as long as it's supported.