[olug] Power Cost comparison on firewall boxes

[Rob Townley]

i have two of the 1u short depth rackables.  1 is used for vyatta. The
other should have been untangle months ago.  They are fast, but LOUD.
The fans in the Rackables i have are hardwired directly to the power
supply, so underclocking and only spinning up the fans as needed was
not just setting some BIOS settings and messing with cpuspeed type
stuff.   No speed sensors on the fans either.  If you want them quiet,
you will probably have to invest more, but maybe not that much when
$20.00 is knocked off the price?  (Shipping not included.)

Knock$20 off.  dual xeon short depth Rackable for $99.00 or an IBM for $89.00.
http://www.surpluscomputers.com/network/c-1123/server-systems.html?sort=4&group=0

vyatta has recommended against Atoms in the past because they were not
powerful enough.
vyatta didn't really go into what kind of load is find for Atom's however.

FYI,
http://www.logicsupply.com/categories/firewall_systems
sells premade _fanless_ systems with untangle, m0n0wall or pfSense.
$293 is the least expensive one.


GBit may come in handy if your networks are physically segmented and
the router is the only link.