OPNsense on any small scale dual LAN box, either a used mini PC or a purpose made one.
I bought a refurbished SFF PC and put a PCIe NIC in it. Installed opnSense.
Cheap as chips. Supremely powerful.
We probably need more details as to what exactly you’re attempting to accomplish and how you’re attempting to accomplish it.
The main issue is that each rule you add to a firewall has a performance penalty: each packet is checked against each rule before it’s passed.
Ten rules require 10x more cpu than 1 rule, 100 rules need 10x more than 10 rules, and so on.
Depending on how much traffic and how many rules we’re talking about and what kind of expectation you have for performance as well as anything else (eg. vpn endpoint), “small and cheap” may not be fast enough, and you might have to lean into higher performance hardware.
They’re not checked against every rule. First pass it stops.
Yeah, maybe could have been clearer.
I was very vividly remembering a VERY SMART client I had a while ago that had like 600 rules blocking all manner of ports and protocols and IPs, and wondering why everything performed like dogshit.
Sure, it’ll go until it hits the first match, but if you have enough rules, you’re going to be churning through an awful lot of cpu getting everything to the first match.
OP may not have been intending to do something quite that uh, special, but people do funky things.
I don’t know what kind of specs you’re looking for for your system, but I’ve been very happy with my netgate.
Though it’s still close to $200 for the lowest model, but comes with support if your not really sure what your doing.
Netgate 1100 $189
No link posted because I didn’t look at the rules for this community.
Seconded. Not the cheapest solution, but worth the price.
I’m doing opnsense on a protectli
@alvaro @selfhosted @selfhost
For a homelab I’d look into OpenBSD’s PFI’ve been using an R210ii with PFSense for like 8 years now. It’s been rock solid and only sips like 20 watts.
What are you wanting?
Dlwrx36 flashed to openwrt should serve you nicely on gigabit ethernet
MikroTik is very affordable and can be configured quite extensively.
I just have a small Sophos Firewall at home, it does the job very well, but its a little expensive compared to free versions.
I get it for free because i do business with them.
If you’re considering building your own firewall, you’ve started down a long path of homelabbing. I’d encourage you to start with a proper setup and allow yourself plenty of room to grow. You want your setup to be extensible, and the firewall is just the beginning.
I’d grab at least a 15U rack and a Dell poweredge R210. Throw in a gigabit nic and install OPNsense. You’ll have room for your switches, NAS, UPS, etc… later.
