Re: Low power, quiet least expensive firewall option

On Fri, 8 Dec 2006, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.security.firewalls, in article
<457977c1$0$15792$ba620dc5@text.nova.planet.nl>, arja wrote:
[color=blue][color=green]
>> Laptops are designed to be power-lean and silent. why don't they make
>> desktops that way ?[/color]
>
>That the performance/$ question.[/color]

The Internet side of the firewall is generally a 10 Megabit Ethernet
style connection - and only with rare exception is the data rate in excess
of that. A 16 bit ISA bus - used on the 80386SX can handle 15 MegaByte
per second. A 32 bit ISA bus can handle anything a cable/DSL connection
can provide without raising a sweat. The main problem with the ISA bus is
handling 100 Megabit LANs as there were not that many interface cards
capable of that speed (ex: 3C515). Laptops also make it difficult to have
two independent network cards - difficult, but hardly impractical. I
think the remnants of the laptop I'm using was an Acer (I got it from a
spare parts table at a yard sale) - certainly it's a 386SX-16 with two
10BaseT network cards and a modem (for a backup connection to the world)
and a second serial port used as a backup connection for administration.
It is more than adequate.

Your firewall will need more recourses if it has a display of a police
officer directing characters riding in toy cars representing traffic
that the firewall is passing. Most people find that the firewall itself
works quite well without this crap. Likewise, the firewall does not
need to mail self-congratulatory messages to every user announcing that it
has blocked "an attack" from some random address out in the world. The
connection was blocked - it's over - get on with your life. Nothing you
can do will cause the Internet Police to come an arrest the owner of the
remote computer.

Old guy