Hardware

I have tried to Google this, and have read threads concerning internal MiniPCI wireless vs. external AP, but they all --including what seems to be section 16.24 of the outdated(?) monowall FAQ-- relate to older (pre FreeBSD 6) versions of monowall.

So, I am extremely happy with my WRAP based monowall over the last few years, but now I need to add some basic wireless or some simple web surfing and a MPD (music player daemon) remote.

Seems I can get slightly used  Linksys WAP54Gs on Craiglsist for about thirty USD. But, it would add more clutter to my shelf, use one more outlet, and possibly a little bit more electricity. Furthermore, the reason I initially went to a WRAP/monowall  based firewall solution was because of all the headaches (hangs, reboots, dropouts, limited options, crappy firmware) that my Netagear router of years ago caused.

Adding MiniPCI, cable, and antenna to my monowall would cost almost double, not take up an outlet, and keep everything in one box.

So what is the consensus these days? In or out? Security risks? What's more manageable?

I recommend keeping it out if you want G or N.  The throughput is not there for the WRAP/soekris + miniPCI wireless.

I am using wireless for HD content to feed a couple of MythTV front-ends.  Therefore, keeping everything internal and being able to reliably run 18+mbps was my primary requirement.  My secondary requirement is to ensure integrity of the firewall/access point capabilities.  I ended up moving to pyramid linux to meet my goals.  It's definitely light year's behind m0n0wall's polish.  However, pyramid linux outperforms by almost 2X the 802.11g throughput.

I get a steady 20mbps with 50% cpu running pyramid linux with my 4801+ Atheros cm9 miniPCI.  I could only get around 12.5mbps with 100% cpu on the same hardware running 1.3xx-1.3b11 revisions.  Polling vs no polling resulted in no noticeable performance gains.

Good Luck!