OT: ADSL safe practices and setting up a home network

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Fri, Apr 14, 2006 at 11:07:05 -0700,
  "Wolfgang S. Rupprecht" <wolfgang+gnus200604 at dailyplanet.dontspam.wsrcc.com> wrote:
> 
> Bruno Wolff III <bruno at wolff.to> writes:
> > They cost less than using a dedicated general purpose machine for
> > that purpose.
> 
> If you are going to be running that general purpose machine anyway
> there isn't any savings.

And for some people this is the case.

> 
> > They don't make as much noise as a general purpose machine.
> 
> You might want to look into an Antec Sonata case.  The thing is
> wonderfully quiet.  While it isn't quite as quiet as the fanless
> hardware router, it is quieter than the birds chirping outside or the
> traffic noise from cars driving by.

The cost of buying a high quality case again makes this a trade off.

> 
> > So if you want a machine that will act as a firewall for the rest of your
> > network 24x7, it can make sense to use a firewall box to do this rather
> > than a general purpose machine.
> 
> If you want to run NFS so that your home directory is the same no
> matter which computer you sit down at, you'll end up keeping that
> computer up all the time anyway.

Some people will want to do this, others will want to save costs for
power and turn the machine off. General purpose machines are normally
going to need maintenance or have failures more often than a hardware
firewall.

My point wasn't that all (or even most) people should get hardware firewall
boxes, just that it is a reasonable alternative for some people.