gateway/firewall MB was: Re: [plug] Linux thin clients

[Craig Ringer]

> Looking at it now I'm not sure it is exactly what I thought it was but
> take a look:
> 
> http://www.soekris.com/net4801.htm

Nice. Too bad it's x86 compatable - it'd be handy to have a non-x86 
firewall.

I have a 96mb flash module that would do very nicely as storage on such 
a machine. It's got mini-pci - I could drop in a mini-pci 802.11b card 
and hook it up to an external antenna.

Designed to run fully headless (bios over serial, etc) - no more f**ing 
about with a KVM when I need to work on my firewall before linux comes 
up. Wow. Firewall admin by minicom.

Leon just mentioned dual ethernet EPIA machines becoming available - 
definitely interesting, and I'll probably get one instead if they turn 
out quite a bit cheaper than this setup. As it is though, this thing 
looks incredibly cool. 3 ethernet, PCI, mini-pci, USB ... nice.

Some of their other models do PCMCIA for 802.11b, but Mini-PCI should do 
the job quite nicely.

Oh, and any company that has "Due to production cost improvements we're 
reducing our prices a little...." on their news page gets my cash.

I especially like the way I can (at a surprisingly reasonable price) 
pick up a 3DES hardware accel board, if for some reason I need to run an 
IPSec VPN on many megabits of data.

The availability of it in a nice pre-made case is just icing on the cake.

Thanks /so/ much for the tip. It's like an EPIA machine, but 2/3 the 
price and twice as useful for what I want. Admittedly a lot slower too, 
but you can't have everything.

When I get mine (assuming I don't recover from my sudden, desparate 
desire to get one), I'll let you folks know how I go.

Craig Ringer