Ubuntu as FW/Proxy/IDS/WAP

[yeleek]

Hi,

I want to build a firewall/proxy/ids/wireless access point. I know I could use Astaro/ClearOS/Pfsense for this (except possibly the wireless part). I figure I'll learn far more if I do it myself manually rather than relying on a prepared distro.

Has anyone ever done anything similar with Ubuntu or Debian? If so care to provide some insight please?

Thanks

[Frizianz]

If you have a router with built in wireless you can just have the firewall/proxy server with two nic and just get the firewall to be a DHCP server to assign ip addresses and disable the dhcp server on the router. So then you will have:

Router -- Clients
| |
Firewall

Thus all traffic will be forced to go through the firewall and then back to the router to the clients