I am on Telewest in Birmingham UK so I have a broadband co-ax out of a fixed wall socket into a telewest broadband modem. The modem has a USB connection which I have never used and an ethernet port.
The ethernet port connects via cat 5 cable to a network card in an old Pentium 150.
Another ethernet card in the Pentium 150 connects to a switch
Before I go on I should explain that the Pentium 150 is running the free distribution of Smoothwall and is my perimeter firewall. The "red" side is the internet side and the "green" side is my home network. The smoothwall box also acts as a router.
The switch currently only connects to a wireless access point.
Inside the rest of the house there are three PCs using wireless connections and extra internet security products including software firewalls. One PC has a couple of printers hanging off it.
Before I moved house recently I had one of the PCs directly wired to the switch via cat 5 and one of the printers was shared off a print server connected to the switch. Now that is not possible.
My main problem is that the rather noisy smoothwall box is in a family area of the house and "words are exchanged" regularly about it.
I think I have two choices.
1) Move the smootwall box (and switch and Wireless access point). To do this, given that the telewest point of entry and it's cable modem can't be moved, I need to somehow bridge the ethernet segment out of the cable modem. An ethernet across the house mains is out because of different ring mains circuits from where I am to where I want to be. I can't run extra cat 5 cabling (rented house). I was wondering about a wireless bridge but know nothing about such products. Can anyone advise please.
2) Replace with the smoothwall box with some kind of off the shelf router/perimeter firewall perhaps even incorporating a switch. My worry with this solution is updates. Smoothwall gets occasional updates to enhamce security given the ever changing nature of threats. How do hardware solutions update themselves. Or don't they. And are they basically any good at all?
Thanks in avance.
The ethernet port connects via cat 5 cable to a network card in an old Pentium 150.
Another ethernet card in the Pentium 150 connects to a switch
Before I go on I should explain that the Pentium 150 is running the free distribution of Smoothwall and is my perimeter firewall. The "red" side is the internet side and the "green" side is my home network. The smoothwall box also acts as a router.
The switch currently only connects to a wireless access point.
Inside the rest of the house there are three PCs using wireless connections and extra internet security products including software firewalls. One PC has a couple of printers hanging off it.
Before I moved house recently I had one of the PCs directly wired to the switch via cat 5 and one of the printers was shared off a print server connected to the switch. Now that is not possible.
My main problem is that the rather noisy smoothwall box is in a family area of the house and "words are exchanged" regularly about it.
I think I have two choices.
1) Move the smootwall box (and switch and Wireless access point). To do this, given that the telewest point of entry and it's cable modem can't be moved, I need to somehow bridge the ethernet segment out of the cable modem. An ethernet across the house mains is out because of different ring mains circuits from where I am to where I want to be. I can't run extra cat 5 cabling (rented house). I was wondering about a wireless bridge but know nothing about such products. Can anyone advise please.
2) Replace with the smoothwall box with some kind of off the shelf router/perimeter firewall perhaps even incorporating a switch. My worry with this solution is updates. Smoothwall gets occasional updates to enhamce security given the ever changing nature of threats. How do hardware solutions update themselves. Or don't they. And are they basically any good at all?
Thanks in avance.
