[Soekris] Talk me out of buying a net4801

[Adam Retter]

If you hacker side is emerging then does it really have to be pfSense
or m0n0wall? Why not go the whole hog and do your own setup.

I have a net 4801 that I have had running for a few years now with
OpenBSD on it and PF. There are blenty of PF tutorials and documents
out there for people who have some time to spare.

2008/9/26 Chris Boot <bootc at bootc.net>:
> Jim,
>
> If you're looking to run pfSense I've found it doesn't work so well
> anymore on a net4801, you need something beefier to get anywhere with
> it. pfSense is less designed for embedded hardware than it is for
> full-blown PCs, while m0n0wall is still aimed at the smaller devices
> (and even that is starting to have trouble with less-powerful machines
> like the 4801).
>
> I'd really recommend a net5501 for any new projects, despite the added
> cost, size, and no doubt power consumption...
>
> Chris
>
> Jim Arnold wrote:
>> Thanks in advance for humoring me with my unimportant story and
>> questions...
>>
>> For the last few years a FreeBSD box running IPF has been protecting
>> my little home cable modem network. Back then I was having fun hacking
>> around teaching myself Unix. Once I finally migrated to OSX from
>> System 9 I  stopped playing around with Unix except for my little
>> firewall and occasional peeks under OS X's hood.
>>
>> A recent storm took out my power supply on that firewall box.
>> Unfortunately it was a proprietary power supply. I liberated a FreeBSD
>> box out of the closet loaded with FreeBSD 4.11 and tried to duplicate
>> my old firewall. Despite extensive documentation of my old system
>> files I could not get this new box to work as my firewall.
>>
>> While searching around for a solutions I came across m0n0wall and
>> PFSense. Getting them to install and work was very simple, especially
>> PFSense, which was installed on a hard drive. Next I read about using
>> a CF card instead of a hard drive. A few days later my IDE/CF adapter
>> arrived and in minutes I had PFSense running off the compactflash
>> card. My old Geek Hacker self was re-emerging. :)
>>
>> Then I read about the Soekris boxes.
>>
>> My router/firewall is in the basement so noise is not an issue. Now
>> that I have the CF installed a power supply failure is the only weak
>> link in the box. But since this was a home-built box it has a standard
>> PS which will be easy to replace if necessary.
>>
>> The only reason I can come up with to plunk down $243 for a 4801,
>> power supply and shipping, is to save power.  I calculated my current
>> router/firewall expends about 200 watts to run. That costs me $110 a
>> year to power If my calculations are correct. If the 4801 takes 10
>> watts to power that would cost $5.50 a year.
>>
>> Is this a good enough rationalization?
>>
>> What is a reasonable lifespan of a Soekris box?
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-- 
Adam Retter