Quwery about firewall software

[compdoc]

> don't use a general purpose computer to run a firewall. 


A general purpose computer running pfSense is far more reliable and secure
than most consumer firewalls. If a part stops working, you just replace the
part. 

Those low-cost brands of 'firewalls' you find online often die in a year or
two, and many times have vulnerabilities that expose you to the bad guys.
Installing DD-WRT helps but when the units dies, you have to toss the whole
thing and buy another.

pfSense has so many features that you probably won't use 97% of them,
including VPNs, http virus scanning, entire country blocking, http caching,
and usage reporting, to name a couple. 

It runs on freebsd but you don't need to know anything about freebsd to use
it, since it's all browser based. 

An AMD computer using the AM1 socket is fast enough to handle up to a 60M
internet connection, and averages only 25w of energy. Many older boxes can
handle the same, but use more energy. 

For a 1G connection, you will need more horsepower and PCI-e based Intel
nics, though.