MiniITX & IPCop Firewall with Advanced Proxy add-on?

[handy]

Hi, I want to set up IPCop with Advanced Proxy, to use the box as a firewall & caching web proxy server.

My query here relates to meeting the minimum hardware requirements to run the Advanced Proxy - Squid, addition to IPCop on my very small home network.

There will rarely ever be more than 2 people online at a time, though there will be P2P, & utube/google video being used occasionally. Most of the time I am the only user of the internet in our house, there is no business related server here, it is just a standard(?) home network that happens to include a distro hopper.

So, would one of these Via MiniITX boards (which I know will handle the IPCop) be able to deal with the caching load that Squid will place on it in our small network?

I was thinking of booting IPCop from a flash card of some description, & a SATA WD 36Gb Raptor for the cache.

What do you think?

[Edit:] This page has my current working settings on it, if you want to get past the getting there bit.

[cariboo]

If you've got an old PII sitting around it would work just as well as a mini itx board, and be way cheaper to boot. Network I/O really doesn't tax the cpu much so if IPCop still has a web interface you shouldn't have any problesm with an older/lower powered computer.

Jim

[handy]

If you've got an old PII sitting around it would work just as well as a mini itx board, and be way cheaper to boot. Network I/O really doesn't tax the cpu much so if IPCop still has a web interface you shouldn't have any problesm with an older/lower powered computer.

Jim

Thanks for your reply Jim.

I have been doing more reading since I made this post, & was starting to gather that processing power really isn't important for the firewall & the caching web proxy; your post thankfully confirms my slowly coalescing understanding.

If I may ask you another question or two; is choosing to use the same server as a NAS, counter productive? & would a NAS box benefit from more processing power?

I'm thinking I'll go to the recyclers tomorrow & hopefully be able to pick up a suitable old box to setup with IPCop & the Advanced Proxy - Squid extras. I'll evaluate it for a while & continue to investigate the NAS combination as it certainly would be convenient to not have to dedicate & power another box for the job.

Something that I like about the MiniITX solution, is the low power consumption, which over the years of running 24/7, adds up, & may pay for itself & some (I haven't done the maths).

If the Firewall/Proxy is a NAS as well, I'd eventually be running raid 5 with 4 SATA-2 drives & a compact flash boot card, so the thing is going to be getting up near 200watts at its worst. Certainly not 24hours a day though.

I look forward to any additional input you may have Jim, as I have no experience in this area of computing & enjoy learning from those that know.

[volkswagner]

I measured the draw of several machines. All were at idle, one PATA hard drive and one PATA cdrom.

Pent II 400 Mhz ~ 35-40 Watts
Celeron 500Mhz passive cooled (no cpu fan) ~ 35-40 Watts

Pent 4 various 1.6 Ghz-2.4Ghz and and Athlon K6 700Mhz all were hovering 95-110 Watts.

Go with the Pent 2 for CPU power to electrical power advantage.

I just got an Intel Atom based board. I was needing the cpu power to add a photo archive site (LINpha) on my web server (currently the pent 2 400). I have to say I love the capability of the Pent2. For basic web pages it works great. I still may set it up as a firewall/Router. I am just not happy with the limited options on my current router. Gotta love all those PCI slots, and up to 4 PATA drives.

I really liked the idea of the passive Celeron (less noise and dust intrusion). It just seemed more sluggish than the Pent2. I did not do any real world test to confirm it though. It could have been the fact the Pent2 did not have onboard vid/sound as the celeron did. Also the Celeron was a branded Compaq (locked down bios) vs. custom built Pent II.

I have one question which I hope fits this thread.

Can these old Pent 2 boxes push Gigabit lan? Do their PCI bus speeds support it? This would not be for disk usage, only as a Gigabit router.

[handy]

Well I found a Dell Optiplex GX150 at the recyclers for $5-, it is a Pentium III, clocked a bit under 731Mhz, with 256Mb of PC133 RAM a 10Gb Seagate drive, a working (non original) CDROM drive & a floppy.
I've added a 3Com 10/100 NIC.

It was booting very slow, but after playing around in the BIOS & the drive Jumpers it is as it should be now. It boots up to login in XP Pro', which is a good sign.

So now I'll get about downloading, installing (hopefully I don't have any hardware ID problems with the NIC's) & setting up IPCop.

I'll report back any problems or hopefully just my success story.

[handy]

I have installed IPCop, it is showing a fast flashing light on my hub/switch but it won't let me access it via its IP address from another machine?

I think it is working, but I can't configure it beyond the setup.

Hmmmmm...

[handy]

My $5- recycled server has an intermittent freeze.

Which is probably why it was at the garbage dump to begin with I guess.

[carbm1]

I use IPCop here at home and at work.

At home I have an Asus Terminator 1, 800Mhz VIA C3 Processor, 512MB RAM, and a 80GB hard drive. I have most, if not all, of the addons installed. Never had a single problem. I have approx 7 computers here on at any given time. The real winner for me is the Update Accelerator addon.

At work we use a Dell OptiPlex GX270, 2.8Ghz P4, 2GB RAM, 500GB Hard Drive. The hard drive is overkill but it was the only larger one I had laying around. We have a little over 400 computers running with this. Of course we only have a T1 so I'm not really sure what we could really push through this. It does everything we need including VPN between a couple of offices and Road Warrior VPN's.

Just some helpful notes...
http://www.carbm1.com/?cat=9

[gTinker]

handy, just a point I'd like to mention. Unless a version newer than the one I run is able to do it, IPCop takes over the whole machine, you couldn't run a file server on it at the same time. And in my opinion, a hardware firewall should be just that and only that.

[handy]

Thanks for your post Carbm1.

I have had my Optiplex running Memtest86 for 2.5 hours so far, with out failure of any kind. I'll let it go all night, if it makes it through the night without failing, I guess I'll look a little further into the machine, replace data cables maybe try different drives in the hope that I may salvage it. First thing I did when I got it home was blow all of the dust out of the thing with compressed air.

Anyway, if its not this machine, I'll find another for the job.

If I can't get it reliable tomorrow, I'll temporarily setup a drive in my 2nd box & see how I go.

[Edit:]

Thanks for the link, I just caught it, am going to read it now.