Tuesday 12 February 2013

Stand-up Firewall Mark-II

Or version 2.0 as you prefer.
I was not very happy with the outcome of my first project so I decided to improve it slightly.
I got rid of the nails and started drilling small holes in the wood in order to use now screws so the motherboard could fit better to the wood.
I also got rid of the plastic handcuffs :-P and now I am using some clever solutions to make the ethernet cards more stable. A dumb adapter cover with foam glued to the inner side holds them together and it is attached to the mobo with a plastic strip (the mobo had a hole just in the middle :-) )
Additionally I am using a small "fonera" as wifi access point attached to the firewall using a molex for power and its standard RJ45 for data (attached to my last free 3COM adapter).
So now those are the final specs (until my next generation firewall appears of course :-D ):

  • M0n0wall firewall OS v1.3x. 
  • Boots & runs from Compact Flash to avoid power hungry disks.
  • 5 fast ethernet ports (100Mbps), 1x integrated + 4x 3COM cards.
  • "Almost static" WAN IP thanks to DynDNS
  • Variable speed fan with manual control to avoid noise.
  • Wifi 802.11g using a fonera with extended range antenna.
  • Fonera using Gargoyle  firmware v 1.4.7. stable branch.
  • Motherboard donated by a DELL (cannot remember model but ... who cares?) Optiplex GX150.
  • Intel Celeron 900Mhz Socket 370 with the lowest TDP. Just 27 Watts.
  • With QoS and full use of Bittorrent it only goes up to 75% of capacity so it is good enough (for the time being since it has just a 45 Mbps/2Mbps internet connection)
  • 60 W PSU donated from an old SUN machine.
  • Shelve from Leroy-Merlin.
  • Lots of fun :-D

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