My router is an Asus RT-N16, which I liked that it specifically advertises DD-WRT compatibility. Man, it’s been years since I’ve seen someone mention SNORT. I always wanted to build a SNORT appliance but I’m sure they exist by now. Hmm it’d be fun to daisy-chain a couple Arduinos together.
No…I pretty much was the first to get the gigabit driver for Smoothwall 2.0 compiled and a myriad of other brute force applications compiled and made a simple tarball installer. Very crude and sloppy, then I had a falling out…in my anger I did the unthinkable and vandalized my own posts (more or less deleted them) and caused so much damage in the wake of my stupidity…this is why I will never ask for or accept a position as moderator on any forum anywhere.
Since then I slipped out of practice in Linux…I did do a little bit of work with Damn Small Linux for a bit, but never really got into it
I managed to incorporate DSL into a virtual setup using the beginning releases of qemu…just like Smoothwall it was brute force and sloppy and very amateurish
And I did manage to make a floppy install howto for DSL a long time ago as well
http://damnsmalllinux.org/install_from_floppy.html
Nice thing is others took what I started and turned it into a work of art
My handle there was Awphuch
I haven’t messed with linux pretty much since then…and have more or less forgotten most of what I taught myself
Might be better of running it on a Raspberry Pi, it’s a little bit more Linux capable and actually can handle most simple routing
I bowed to peer pressure (haha) and installed the router
It uses 3W (i measure everything with a kill-a-watt), so it won’t break the bank.
I still don’t quite understand how its more secure, but its installed
Think of it as a gate (or “gateway”)
Traffic inside the network is sent out and flagged by the router and a port is kept open for incoming traffic from the addressee of said packet, if something comes in that didn’t first originate from inside the network initially (established connection) it is denied. More or less it prevents unwarranted traffic INTO your network that you initially didn’t ask for in the first place, there is alot more to it, and yes there are ALOT of holes/exploits…but without it, just imagine how safe a bank would be if they took off the lobby doors and left the bank vault door wide open.
a computer can’t do this?
Think of the router as a decoy for your network. The router takes all the malicious packets on itself and makes it harder to discover what the real targets are—your personal computer and other devices like phones, tablets, smart TVs, blue-ray players, etc. TCP/IP works because devices can connect directly to each other. But the router obscures the end point devices by making them non-directly-addressable. To attack something from the outside, you have to get through router’s NAT to connect directly to the computer you are trying to attack, which in practice almost never happens.
Most systems are compromised by tricking the target human into clicking on a malicious attachment or installing a malicious program thinking it’s harmless. If your system is compromised, it’s probably because the weak link was the human. This technique of tricking the humans into compromising their own systems is called ‘social engineering’ and even savvy people can fall for it. My wife even fell for a domain registration scammer trying to charge me $100 to have my domain submitted to Google, which no sysadmin on earth would fall for, but my wife almost just paid it.
Social engineering could be anything from someone calling a company you do business with and impersonating you, to a phishing attack pretending to be your uncle Ned telling you about this great property for sale in Idaho. The same people who are suspicious of computers will tell you every password in the company if you convince them you are with the IT department and sound like you know your stuff.
So I think for security, you are thinking in the wrong directions. The biggest threat to your security is you. I don’t even trust attachments from my wife when I can walk downstairs and double check she sent me a link. The less sophisticated I think someone is, the less likely I am to open an attachment from that person. I have some relatives who only send me email or post to my Facebook wall when their computer is compromised and starts spamming everyone. The shady people I know usually have a better grasp on technology 
Agreed…but you still need a front door on your house 
Thanks. I wish I had Chuck Norris protecting my computer, and then I wouldn’t even need a front door.
Condoms don’t work on him, because there is no protection from Chuck Norris.
Saw this article and thought of this old thread