Unfortunately no one can be told what fun_plug is - you have to see it for yourself.
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Or should I be considering more hardware on the network?
I think the above question is self explanatory for the people who can answer this question..
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It depends - on what you are trying to do - which you haven't bothered to detail.
In my opinion NAT/SPI leaves quite a bit to be desired, personally I want CBAC, but for the average consumer, I'd say it's more than adequate
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I used to run a smoothwall back in the days when I wanted to retain my dialup (!) connection when windoze decided I needed to reboot for any random reason. But it was always a bit of a pain to have to boot up another PC just to dial the net or it was too noisy to leave on in my room overnight. I always thought a hardware firewall was a bit overkill for a home computer but that was before I had a network attached storage and other family computers on the same dsl modem/router. I think I can safely say that I won't be doing any ftp, vpn or web serving any time soon, and if i did I would surely get a new smoothwall up and running regardless.
Would be nice if the NAS could act as the firewall but then I guess it would need 2 network controllers?
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Stutz Jr wrote:
Would be nice if the NAS could act as the firewall but then I guess it would need 2 network controllers?
I believe you can buy firewall/routers with a USB port that allows an external USB drive to be connected - for example the D-Link DI-624S, the Linksys WRT350N and the Netgear WGT634U.
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Hey thanks for the model suggestions and sorry the vague original post. I guess I didn't want to advertise a substandard firewall if that were the case, but in the end if I have a problem I need to know about it before I can fix it.
I'm not sure I understand your suggestion of units which allow external USB storage? I already have a NAS and I won't need any more capacity for some time. The only reason I suggested using the 323 itself was to ask if it were possible it would avoid the need for additional new hardware.
My NB5Plus4W modem / router can be operated in half bridge mode and allow a single pc to act as a software firewall (ie. smoothwall) so unless I bite the bullet and decide to replace the modem (and upgrade to gigabit ethernet) I doubt that I would be buying a new router either.
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@Stutz.
How you do what you do, is your choice - I bought my DNS-323 to use as a NAS and I use it only as a NAS - I know other folks want to, and try to, make it do everything under the sun, apparently the prime reason being reduced power consumption.
Since you considered (however briefly) using it as a firewall - a purpose for which it is not suited because of it's hardware design (you would need two network interfaces), I though you might be interested to know you could take the reverse approach - and have your firewall do double duty as a NAS.
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Cheers fordem!
Thanks for the comments and perspective
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