MicroFirewalls for home/low speed connections

[chuck <chuck () yerkes com>]

I'm actaully surprised at what IS appearing.  A friend just picked
up a ($200-300) 3com hub/NAT box for modem sharing.  I poked a bit
and found a bunch of things that are starting to do just this.

I expect that these devices will start appearing more and more
and PC vendors and Sun and the like start really pushing Internet
capable appliance devices.

Been sort of disappointed that the Netwinder never got into small
configs for sub-$500.  It really had promise at that level, but they
seem to be aiming a different way. It's a nice little box and runs on
close to zero power with the ARM chip.  The DISK is the only reason is
has a fan at all.

So what do we need?  Well, for DSL or a T1, a 486/50 will handle
those speeds just fine.  Not being 1993, the slowest imaginable
low power chip (I like the ARM, there are others), with at least
4-8 MB RAM.  Then a bit of flash RAM/PROM for a micro-OS (stripped
BSD or something specialized).

What do I use?  Well, I had a Sparc 2 that was getting a bit
annoyingly slow.  It's faster than my DSL.

I've set up a friend with a $25 486 running OpenBSD.  IPSEC
just bites on that, but for basic NAT/firewall work it's overkill.

No UI, 'cept vi, but at this point I can build a firewall in
about 2 hours (given a real OS).

Been keeping my eye out for something like a PC-104 type board
able to take a dual ethernet card and a little tiny disk.

Why can't the DSL routers ("modems") have this built in?  Even
just basic filtering?

chuck
Quoting m. rizzi (rizzi () netcom com):
> > amazed that there seem to be no 'good' solutions for home users, i.e. under 
> > $200 solutions.  
>
> > What are list members currently using on DSL/cable setups?  
> > Anyone encountered better products for the average home user?
>
>       I joined this list a month ago for just
>       this reason. I am not a security or
>       firewall expert at all. I've signed up
>       for DSL (coming any day now) and am
>       looking for a decent solution for