Mark Weaver wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On Tue, 1 Jan 2008 08:57:22 -0500 > Robert Moskowitz <rgm at htt-consult.com> wrote: > >> Have you ever thought about how rare floppy drives are now? At best >> you go with a bootable usb, if your notebook supports bootable USB. >> My Libretto does have a bootable floppy, but that is something extra >> to carry. It will not boot from anything else (besides its HD). My >> nc4010 (this notebook) will boot from usb. My corp notebook (nc2400) >> is locked down; and I don't see any value at getting corp IT bent out >> of shape. >> > > why would you even think about using a Notebook computer as a firewall? > I was assuming you were going to delegate this task to an older machine > with sufficient resources to handle the task and not give the task to a > notebook computer. Of course in my lab, the firewall is a 'older' machine. But I want to learn from this so that when I am at a conference or trade show and need a firewall 'fast', I can put up the services on one of my Centos notebooks. BTW, WRT 'older' machines. I am looking more at the cost of running these machines (power draw). It is not just a matter of the $0.124/KWH that I pay, but the cost to add another circuit (my NOC shares two circuits that were already runnning at 50% utilizatoin), and the cost of cooling in the summer (we added a tap into the cold air return system by the rack fans to capture the computer heat for the winter). I just got the firewall running (see later note) on a decTOP micro PC that I pulled the 10Gb 3.5" drive and installed a 2.5" 6Gb drive. The system pulls about 10W! Compared to ~100W for some of my Compaq SFFs. Let's see 90W/day = 2.16KWH = ~$0.27/day = ~$97.76/year. That can pay for replacing another old Compaq with another decTOP (well not really as you have to add memory, switch out drives, and add a second USB ethernet dongle; guess the ROI is around 2 years).