Posted by Kromey at 11:54pm Aug 8 '07
I've been using IPCop for about a week now as my router/perimeter firewall on my 3Mb cable modem connection. I've installed it on an old HP Pavilion xe738 with a 667MHz processor, 64MB RAM, and 20GB HDD. Had to get a couple of NICs for it, though - the thing only had a modem.
Anyway, it works great. I feel like I've got so much control (I do), and it's simple to set up and configure and administer. For those who know enough about iptables (like me), you can easily find out exactly what every little change does to your box, completely unlike those silly little plastic routers you can buy off the shelf.
I had been using a D-Link DI-524 wireless router. It worked, but once I started using IPCop I discovered that it was painfully slow - my latency dropped by better than a factor of 10, and DNS lookups are more than 20 times faster.
Not to mention the added security of built-in IDS, the flexibility to define up to 4 networks (RED = internet; GREEN = internal "trusted" network; ORANGE = DMZ; BLUE = "road warrior" wireless network), traffic shaping, DHCP, NTP, even a web proxy to reduce latency and bandwidth when browsing the internet. All this running on a free, minimalist, hardened Linux distribution that can run on that old hunk of junk you'd normally just toss in the dumpster!
Yeah, I'm in love.