My Home Network is small but I have an old PC just sitting around and I've been wanting some sort of a Real Deal Hardware Firewall. Beyond that which exists on my Belkin N750DB Router. I have an old wireless router(Netgear WNR2000) and PC (ASUS P5Q Deluxe, E8600,4GB Ram lots of storage ect) I'd like to be able to have a Home Server as well as a hardware firewall for DHCP,DNS,NAT,Ad Blocking. I'd like to consolidate as many of these functions on one spare machine and not have to run a separate firewall on each device and ad blocking on each browser. I'm not aware of whats available or even possible. My first thought was to just build an Ubuntu Box and use some sort of free VMware Appliance guest to manage my home network, but thats probably not feasable for some good reason or why isn't everyone doing it? Any ideas or tips to point me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. I'd just hate to waste my time crash coursing on stuff that ultimately won't meet my needs.
Thanks
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