On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 11:02 PM, Nick Holland
<nick@holland-consulting.net> wrote:
quoted text
> On 10/03/10 22:11, David Higgs wrote:
>> I am building a replacement router/firewall for home use
>
> stop there.
>
> You aren't General Motors, Yahoo, or Google.
> You are looking to spend a lot of time and money trying to optimize
> performance on a super-fast-sport-car that will be only used to go to
> and from work in rush hour traffic.  You aren't going any faster than
> the guy in front of you is going, or in this case, than your ISP is
> handing you data.
>
> There is nothing built in the last 10 years that can't do a home
> router/firewall like this for most people, with the exception of a few
> crappy super-low-power systems that people like to suggest as the answer
> to all questions (and then complain when the pathetic NICs and anemic
> CPUs don't pump data like a ten year old machine with non-pathetic NICs
> does).
>
> NONE OF IT WILL MATTER TO YOU.

Yeah, you got me -- I know it's overkill.  But give me a little
credit, I don't plan on tweaking knobs or compiling custom kernels to
squeeze performance.  I outgrew that phase five years ago on my circa
1999 desktop-turned-router that just recently passed on.  To stick
with the car analogy, I just want a reliable new car with better gas
mileage, that will get me through the next 10 years or more.

quoted text
> Realtek NICs, three digit celeron processors, the worst of the worst
> will pump more data than your ISP will deliver, so what do you gain by
> tweaking for the last one percent of data flow you will never see?
>
> Conventional stuff will cost less and run more reliably than fancy
> stuff, and while you may save a few watts, you are unlikely to recoup
> your investment.
>
> And why would you put an SSD on a firewall?  so you can discover they
> are a lot more expensive and less reliable than an old hard disk?  If
> you want fast and reliable, use an old, burned in HD, and back up your
> /etc directory.  If you want low power or silent, get a CF adapter and a
> small CF card, or if your hw can boot from it, a USB flash drive.

I was researching SSDs to make the box quieter and maybe lower power;
I/O speed was just a bonus.  I can just as easily use spinning
platters until SSD tech improves and/or converges with OpenBSD
support.  I'll google up some smaller systems (Soekris, ALIX, etc?)
and see how they strike me.  Pointers here are even more welcome, as I
am not as familiar with this end of the spectrum and want to avoid the
aforementioned "crappy super-low-power systems."

Thanks for the input.

--david