[ale] Seeking quality embedded SOHO firewall/wireless/vpn device that supports Linux

[Brian Pitts]

John Wells wrote:
> So, do I already have the answer? Will OpenWrt provide a sufficient
> firewall and VPN for my SOHO on the WRT54GS?

Google shows that people are doing it, but there is slow-down.

"Throughput Without VPN
Throughput over the wireless link between the WRT and the Minitar was
tested at approximately 600 kbytes/sec (ie, typical for an 802.11b
wireless link).

Throughput With VPN
Once the VPN tunnel was established, and all traffic routed through it,
the tests were repeated. Throughput dropped to approximately 300 kbytes/sec.

The major cause of this slow-down is the CPU in the WRT, as it needs to
encrypt and decrypt all the traffic that is passing through the VPN
tunnel. This can be observed by monitoring the CPU usage on the WRT
while transferring large amounts of traffic through the VPN tunnel - the
OpenVPN process consumes 99% of the CPU during this time."

http://martybugs.net/wireless/openwrt/openvpn.cgi

-Brian