Newbie - Advice/Help
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Hi,
I currently work for a charity which is based in a remote location which has broadband supplied via a wireless mesh network.
We curently have an internal network which connects to this broadband via a Linksys WRT54GR router which in turn connects to the mesh network via a wireless bridge.
We currently only connect to one mesh node which has been a single point of failure in our internet access.
We also have a second wireless bridge which can connect to a different mesh node thus givin us dual wan access which isn't currently utilised.
I have been looking into dual wan router for a while now, but have deemed these too expensive for the charity.
I have recently stumbled across PFSense which seems to be a cost effective solution if I am reading correctly.
I currently have an old pc (1Ghz amd processor 512MB 133 hz ram and a 20 GB HD) which I am considering using as the hardware to put PFSense on to give the network dual wan capability with load balancing.
Will this hardware be sufficient for this application? There will only ever be a maximum of 20 pc's connected using the internet at any one time, so not massive bandwidth usage.
Also, as our existing router already has a firewall and NAT built in, would it be possible to just place this in a DMZ on the PFSense machine?
Finally, will any network card work with PFSense or do I need drivers as well??
Any help and pointers to idiot proof guides will be a great help.
Regards
Andy
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All of these questions have been answered in more detail if you search the forum.
The hardware you have described should be plenty powerful. Search the forum for more on hardware sizing, try the hardware forum.
I would replace your current router and have the pfsense box be your only NAT and firewall. Will simplify things.
Almost any network card will do, but see the HCL on www.pfsense.org and know that Intel cards are the best, and Realtek cards are the worst.