OK, so realistically no one is going to jump up and down with excitement about the prospect of inheriting that ancient P2 machine sitting iout there n the garage. Oh sure, it has about 128MB of PC100 in it, yet there is no way that family members are going to be lining up to take it off your hands. Get a clue - it’s really old!

So what can we do with this then? Recycling is not an option in many areas and besides that, you hate to throw away a working PC. Well, I have one option for you: SmoothWall.

The SmoothWall project started with version 1.0 and since then, has worked its way into SmoothWall Express 3.0 Alpha. Super easy to use and setup, this is a great way to put your PC back to work rather than sending to the junk pile.

Because this utility is considered a firewall of sorts, many people make the mistake of assuming that ZoneAlarm or Sygate are just easier or better. Frankly, this is not the case. Those two programs are as secure as the OS they are running on. And even if your Windows machine is fully patched, the OS remains a huge target because of its popularity.

SmoothWall is a standalone Linux distro which has the sole purpose of acting as a highly configurable firewall. And just how good is this tool? Apparently good enough to base a company around the GPL project. Yup, if you have the time and an old PC with a couple of exta NICs sitting around, you might want to give this project a shot. After all, the network you protect could be your own!

[tags]routers,firewalls,smoothwall,network security[/tags]