Flwrite wrote:

For anyone following along:

Phew, quite a set of researching posts...

The firewall-computer also serves as a router.  Therefore, only a dumb

[...]

100 MHz Pentium 1 is fast enough to serve two computers.  I guess you can

[...]

You can do a surprising amount with a 100MHz CPU.

Unanswered questions:

Shall I assume "two" ethernet cards? -- one to the internet connection, and
the other to the hub?  (The Guzzintta and the Guzzoutta.)

Yes. The firewall machine physically isolates the protected lan from everywhere else.

Are there little hub PCI cards (for the Guzzoutta)?  Just a few ports would
do me fine.

There are 4 port cards, but these seem to be rare oddities. Instead, just gobble up two PCI slots with a NIC in each. Cheap also.

What are some firewall-router programs that are used in
dedicated-firewall-router computers?  Or is that all included in the Linux
OS?

The 'workings' are already in the kernel. There are then lots of utilities and GUI stuff that you can put on top to make the tweakings very much easier. You can even do traffic shaping and clever stuff that such as Cisco charge mega-bucks for.

There's a few dedicated distros for firewall use. Some run straight from a removeable disk (no HDD required).

Smoothwall, Shorewall & Guarddog are three names worth looking up. There's lots more.


Good luck,
Martin