[ale] Seeking quality embedded SOHO firewall/wireless/vpn device that supports Linux

[Jim Kinney]

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 10:52 AM, John Wells <jb at sourceillustrated.com>
wrote:

>
> Yes, but that gets me back to square one....I'm trying to eliminate
> all my servers that simply provide infrastructure and replace them
> with embedded low power machines. If I can get rid of this
> firewall/vpn, I'm down to zero servers that have to be running all of
> the time...
> __
>

It really depends on how many simultaneous VPN connections you need
running.  If just 1, then the router can handle it. More than that and you
are not going to be happy as the little cpu bogs down on decrypting packets.

If you must use a separate machine for the VPN decryption, just use an AMD
box with the powernow! and hdparm the drive to sleep once the system is
running. Use some script-fu to preload the vpn stuff and keys into RAM and
make sure to use a variable-speed cpu fan (4-pin style has cpu speed
control). You can also use a compact flash drive (read-only) for the boot up
and then a RAM disk for / (and keys, etc) and drop the power req's down in
the low 30W range. It's not as low as the wireless-off, active Internet mode
of the linksys but it does have the horsepower to do the job.



-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
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