Setting up an úber Linux firewall

[Combat squirrel]

as title really, i have an old 1ghz athlon lying around and 128meg of ram, iv read lots and lots about how good linux firewalls are, but i know nothing about it, could someone give me a good linux program to run thats the dogs dangleys and very easy to setup, and im not talking about freesco etc, i want something unhackable

it will hopefully be attached to 5 pc's on the network, i thinking the onboard lan port + 5 pci network cards ( i assume i need one network plug --> in from my broadband router, a netgear dg843, ill be wanting to run everything through linux router instead of that, so ill just use it for its broadband moden it has)

 

[tolien]

IPCop, Smoothwall, or just set up your own iptables jobby?

No real need for 5 network cards though, a switch with enough ports would be as cheap, and less hassle.

 

[Beansprout]

If you put 5 network cards in then you'll get far worse LAN performance than putting the 5 PCs on a switch, and when the firewall PC dies the whole network will die

 

[-Mike-]

Is there a real advantage to a linux firewall instead of using a routers built in one?

 

[R4z0r]

Is there a real advantage to a linux firewall instead of using a routers built in one?

Flexability really.

If you do this I'd highly suggest IPCop (Like has been said) but would offer one bit of advice. Get a range real IP addresses from your ISP so you can give the firewall a real IP and let the Netgear take care of the routing. Saves you messing about with DMZ/port-forwarding, etc on the Netgear.