It seems increasingly unwise to allow an Intel-made CPU to talk to the outside world. But the NUC-style machines are almost exclusively Intel. What should we do for a new firewall?

Several people have asked me recently what hardware I would buy today for use as a home firewall.

• Partaker N3050 B5
  • $121
  • N3050 CPU
  • no RAM (1 slot DDR3L up to 8GB)
  • no SSD (room for mSATA + 2.5” SATA disk)
  • 2 x gigE + wifi 802.11 b/g/n
• 2GB DDR3L RAM
  • $15
  • 2GB RAM
• Kingston 120GB mSATA SSD
  • $40
  • 120GB mSATA SSD

for a total of $176, including shipping. Links were accurate as of October 22, 2018.

This gets you a tiny box, similar in size to random commercial house router/firewall/wifi access points, which can run a standard Linux operating system with a complex firewall running at 1 Gb/s in and out, more RAM than strictly necessary, and an SSD which is both very large (and therefore can last a very long time) and boot the system quickly enough that you can do a reboot without losing TCP sessions.

I would also recommend a medium-sized USB thumb drive to set up as an emergency booting and backup device. Call it another $15 or so.

A few years ago I wrote about my new firewall Let’s look at what I’ve learned since then.