creating a firewall out of a 486 to a p1

**Weedman** · 10-08-2005

hello all

i wish to create a firewall box to filter internet traffic for my family's windows pc.

i have an old 486 and am wondering what i would have to do to turn that into a firewall box.

if i am lucky, i may get a p1-133 to use instead.

what do i need to turn either one of these boxes into a firewall?

thanks
weed

**AlexK** · 10-08-2005

if you want a minimum amount of hassle, there are already a few firewall distros out there which you can configure to your hearts content. See smoothwall or ipcop Both of these are designed to run on Pentium 1 class pc's with small amounts of ram. Both of these can be managed from either windows or linux clients via a webpage and can be used headlessly.

Or, you could simply use slackware and iptables and stuff like that to take care of the firewalling/routing for you.

**Weedman** · 10-08-2005

thanks for the suggestion for a P1, but what about a 486? would it be too slow to keep up with the traffic flow?

on 2nd thought, only have PCI Lan cards hanging around so that would rule out my 486 for the moment.
but, if i WAS going to use the 486, could i put smoothwall or ipcop on it?

**AlexK** · 10-08-2005

smoothwall or ipcop would run on a 486. but you would need some hefty amounts of ram for a 486, i'd say atleast 32 megs. It would be able to handle the traffic flow and all, but don't expect any miracles or a speed demon of a computer. Also, you'd need some lan cards that would work, I am not even sure that linux would support ISA lan cards, or even wether such old lan cards had RJ-45 ports.

**Weedman** · 10-08-2005

ok, so that fully rules out using my old 486.

now i am going to (eventually) install smoothwall on my old P1.

is there any other details i should know about? i am guessing that i will need 2 lan cards and a normal-running system.

what do i do after i have got all hardware together?
i know that i install smoothwall, but what else?

i cant install smoothwall or put together the hardware considering i blew the PSU in it by accidentally switching the wrong wires.

weed

**drakebasher** · 10-08-2005

Originally Posted by AlexK

I am not even sure that linux would support ISA lan cards, or even wether such old lan cards had RJ-45 ports.

Yes, Linux supports ISA NICs. Any ISA cards (not just ethernet cards) are likely to take a bit more effort to configure than PCI cards. I recently went through that with Slackware 8.1 on a 486. Internet sharing was very slow, but I think because the NICs I used are 10Mbps instead of the more common 100Mbps. I'm not sure if there are 100Mbps ISA NICs? As for the connector type, yes, ISA cards can have the RJ-45 port, but they are also available with BNC and some other (obsolete?) connector, so if you buy an ISA NIC, make sure you know what the connector is. But in any case, chances are, Linux can deal with it.

**AlexK** · 10-09-2005

Originally Posted by Weedman

ok, so that fully rules out using my old 486.

now i am going to (eventually) install smoothwall on my old P1.

is there any other details i should know about? i am guessing that i will need 2 lan cards and a normal-running system.
...

Yes, one detail. You will not be able to run any other OS other than smoothwall on that computer i.e. smoothwall takes over the hard drive. yes, you will need 2 nic's but thats about all. Oh, and be sure to read their admin manual, plenty of helpful hints there,

**Weedman** · 10-14-2005

i am now going to use a p1-133 with 64mb of ram. It is old yet kind of stable.

Thread Tools

Display

creating a firewall out of a 486 to a p1

Posting Permissions