[clug] anyone using a Linux as an Internet gateway?

[Scott Ferguson]

On 20/10/10 11:38, Peter Barker wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Oct 2010, Scott Ferguson wrote:
> 
>> I can highly recommend IPCop as a firewall and router
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCop
>> It's a good way to recycle an old, low spec PC. Smoothwall Community
> 
> Now-adays I recommend people *not* reuse an old PC for this 24/7 work. 
> I suggest they make an investment in a low-power box and wait for the
> machine to pay for itself in power savings.
> 
> I replaced a 70W PC with a 4W Fit-PC (version 1).  That's about $85/year
> in electricity (at current rates).  The unit cost me $420.  That's not a
> bad ROI.  I find the machine to have ample power for shifting packets
> around.
> 
>> Cheers
> 
> Yours,


As an ROI, it's going to take 5 years to break even, not counting the
initial "old" pc investment (I use low-end laptops with the screens
removed - I don't know the power consumption). In terms of lower
pollution - an older machine has already been manufactured and shipped...
I suspect your solution is incapable of stateful packet inspection,
virus filtering, advanced proxying and caching etc.

That said, the original poster may only be looking for basic routing and
firewall abilities.

Horses for courses and all that. I repeatedly require Windoof updates,
antivirus definition files, Adobe packages, linux packages etc - so the
ability to use Update Accelerator
http://update-accelerator.advproxy.net/ saves me considerable time and
bandwidth (download once, reuse many times).
For my purposes recycling an old boxen is much cheaper and creates less
CO2. Every download saved equals more less total electricity used than
just that on the firewall/router alone. Perhaps I've failed to
extrapolate correctly?

Sincerely