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On 21/08/13 19:35, Daniel Robinson
wrote:
Hello again! I recently bought a Netgear Prosafe Wireless VPN Firewall FVG318 for £1 on ebay and today at work I picked up a Cisco 800A I would like to know which one of the two is going to be better for my home security? I also picked up an IBM blade server, and a fujitsu DX150R which I think is for telephones, there is a whole bunch of 2 line fibre (modems I guess) and switches and cabinets of all sizes, So if anyone can find a home for them give me a holler!!! What's the exact model number on that Cisco part - I'm pretty sure there isn't an "800A" model. Features depend hugely on the exact model, but all the 800s are SOHO type, so sadly you haven't found an industrial strength datacenter router. It is however a genuine router, and if nothing else, you should be able to play with Cisco configuration stuff which you can't do unless you own one (I've got a couple of 2960 switches for that exact reason). Sadly Ciscos are massive douchebags (in general) and doubly so when it comes to obtaining things like up-to-date IOS firmware, manuals, etc, without a really expensive support contract*. I don't imagine the Cisco has any particularly interesting security features, but should support a decent subset of tooling like IPv6, multicast, VLAN and QoS. You're almost definitely going to have do a full factory reset and some homework to even get into it in the first place, and if you're unlucky, it's going to involve serial lines or crossover ethernet cables. Your Netgear is a whole different kettle of fish, and designed for an entirely different role - there's technically nothing stopping you using both of them at once. I'm concerned that as a EOL unit, it won't be receiving any more updates and is potentially vulnerable out of the box, but for £1, who cares? It's another fun toy to learn on. Can't find a single bit of information on the "Fujitsu DX150R", which means either I can't google or you can't read product labels :] The IBM blade sounds like by far the most interesting bit of kit there, as long as it doesn't have exotic power requirements. Cracked the chassis yet? Let us know the product code/serial from that as well so we can look it up. If you're really lucky you might have a Xeon or even an Itanium under the cover. To answer your original question, slap OpenBSD on that blade, configure it as your router/firewall/gateway box and *that* is your most secure machine, by a mile. Keep up the good work single handedly asset-stripping that Currys! I can't believe they had anything left worth taking. Regards * I have access to Cisco support so if/when you need anything for your model, let me know *winks* |
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