Reply With QuoteHi, new here. I am responsible for a wifi network for a summer camp, looking for maybe a linux firewall/router on an old PC to replace our existing firewall/router. Free or cheap is good. The system is strictly for internet and email access, no local networking, basically just a hotspot. The wifi aspect is probably not relevant here, but I do need a firewall and access control. The main thing is to only allow access to paid users, and to monitor / log bandwidth usage for each user since the satellite internet is bandwidth limited. Can't just use wifi security as sooner or later everybody, including non members, knows the password. Also need a website blacklist, so we can block high bandwidth websites like youtube, porn sites, etc.
There are about 50 users, and on average each user has several devices. Typically a one or two dozen users are active at any one time.
Currently, we're using a Sonicwall TZ170 router, assigning a fixed IP address (assigned by the router, not at the user's computer) to each MAC address, and no DHCP. This is tedious to administer but doable, but the Sonicwall is flaky and, I presume, slower hardware than something like a linux router distro on an x86 box.
A system where a user has to log on with a username and password to get access each session would be even better, as we wouldn't have to mess with MAC addresses.
Ideally, I'd like to ignore bandwidth logging during a "free" period between midnight and 6am, but that's not necessary, we're not doing it now. I'd also like to be able to remotely administer it from the internet, but that's again not necessary.
I'm not a network professional, not since the MSDOS days anyway, but I'm fairly saavy for a non pro.
Can anybody offer suggestions on which of the many linux packages would work best for us?
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