Recommendations for a ultra low power / 12v? PC to run Smoothwall

November 20, 2012 12:31 AM

I'm looking for recommendations for a ultra low power / 12v? PC to run Smoothwall

Im looking for a low powered PC to run Smoothwall (must be compatable with 2 network cards) Anyone have any experience or know of an off the shelf solution? I know Smoothwall do there own hardware but its incredibly pricey

posted by toocan to computers & internet (8 answers total)

I forgot to add im looking for a free web filtering solution and have been recommended smoothwall however im open to alternatives?
posted by toocan at 12:35 AM on November 20, 2012

I don't have any specific recommendations, but here are the places I'd start looking:

Soekris and PC Engines make small, low-power appliance computers for this kind of thing. They don't have much CPU power, which is fine for something being a firewall/NAT kind of thing, but might be weak for a web filter— I don't know how much CPU that wants.

You can also try places like Logic Supply, mini-box, Aleutia, mini-itx, or just buy a low-power bookshelf-sized system from a normal retailer like Newegg and put a dual-LAN motherboard and 12v PSU in it.
posted by hattifattener at 1:14 AM on November 20, 2012

I would look into a raspberry pi It would take a bit of work to get going, but once you've

a) Recompiled smoothwall for arm
b) got an additional ethernet working via usb

You would have a very low power PC (5V <1.0A) that would run what you wanted as a headless system.
posted by koolkat at 1:57 AM on November 20, 2012

Have a look around the pfSense forums for hardware recommendations.
posted by devnull at 2:17 AM on November 20, 2012

A Mirabox looks like it would have more network capability than a Raspberry Pi.
posted by scruss at 4:27 AM on November 20, 2012

I bought a alix 2D13 box from netgate. Open source, runs pfsense, does its router/ firewall job very well indeed. You can add various packages to pfsense for filtering, but I'm not sure about performance on this box though.
posted by defcom1 at 6:12 AM on November 20, 2012

Pfsense is awesome. You can use squidguard on pfsense for free webfiltering. We use pfsense on a server so we can get full bandwidth out of our 100/100 connection without having to pay a ton for a router that can handle it.

Is this for home or for a business? If its for a business keep in mind low power hardware might not be able to keep up with the bandwidth of a high bandwidth connection and a lot of users. Specially if you add filtering into the mix.
posted by majortom1981 at 7:48 AM on November 20, 2012 [1 favorite]

Late to the party but I also run a couple of pfSense install on ALIX hardware like this. This runs fine for firewall, Open VPN and Dual WAN failover for <100 users... if you want a decent squid cache or snort IDS running on the same box you'll probably want something a bit better.
posted by dirm at 6:28 PM on November 20, 2012