On Wed, March 5, 2008 9:45 pm, Stanislav Sinyagin wrote:
according to what this guy writes, http://rockpenguin.wordpress.com/2008/02/23/installing-pfsense-on-the-ali x2c1/ such thing as a firewall based on Alix platform requires at least few days of work for a guy on a salary with nothing else to do :) If you start counting the cost of worktime to have it up and running, probably any off-the-shelf firewall would be much more affordable. Or even a Cisco 8XX router, whatever current SoHo series they have :)
I get your point. You have to do some work to get it running, but its far away from days. If you don't need serial access, you can skip the part with the baud-rate configuration. The interfaces can be assigned from the web interface. (And you don't have to unmount the CF card as stated in the article, because dd doesn't need it mounted.) I get an ALIX up and running in about an hour incl. (simple) configuration.
And at least you get a nice enclosure. There's no cool company logo on it, but it doesn't look like homemade.
By the way, if you want a "turn-key" solution, you can buy it assembled and installed:
http://shop.a-enterprise.ch/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=12&product...
However, there is a downside: You get no support for the entire product. If the hardware fails and the boards are sold out, you probably have to wait rather long. (But at this price, I always have a board in reserve.)
Regards, Manuel