Nick, I'm getting about 40 Mbit/sec throughput with a Soekris Net4801, so the 5501 or 2d13 are both more than enough box for basic filtering. A lot depends on how much content filtering you want to do. Some simple QoS and squid rules won't place any serious load on it, but if you want to use something like DansGuardian or SpamAssasin that dives deeper into the content you may want to step up to the mini-ITX. (Note that spamd is a much lighter on resources than either of these.) It also depends on what kinds of traffic you get from your home network -- if all 10 nodes tend to stream or torrent tons of stuff, stepping up the hardware isn't a bad idea. Also, separating the filtering hardware from the routing hardware isn't a bad idea either.
May I also point you to the flashrd system for these kinds of installations? It makes in-place upgrades a lot easier. http://www.nmedia.net/flashrd/ Hope this helps. --Paul On Jun 20, 2011, at 3:08 AM, Nick Hasser wrote: > I want to replace my current firewall (Compaq DL360) with something smaller, quieter (preferably fanless), and less power-hungry. It is currently only NAT'ing my home network, which is about 10 clients. I have a 15Mbps/1Mbps cable internet connection, with D-Link Gigabit switches on the internal network. I want to add QoS and Squid with ad and content filtering to the replacement. I may want to add a dedicated network for wireless clients in the future. > > I'm looking at Soekris net5501, Alix2d13, or a mini-itx atom board. I'm sure the Atom would have enough CPU, but I don't know how much overkill it would be. Will the Soekris or Alix be enough CPU to add QoS and squid with ad and content filtering to a basic NAT box? > > I'm familiar with PXE installations, so no worries there for installing on either the Soekris or Alix boards. > > Have a great day! > Nick [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pkcs7-signature which had a name of smime.p7s]
