General Questions

Hello,

I would like to set up monowall as a traffic shaper at home but I was wondering if I could do that with a single network interface for the monowall.

The scenario consists of an adsl modem-router (Zyxel Prestige 643) and 3 computers. What I would like is:

Internet ------- Modem-router ------- monowall/PC's

The idea is that the PCs and the monowall would be connected to the router. Then, all PC's would use the monowall as a gateway to the Internet. This way I can do QoS.

So for example, let's say my modem-router has IP 192.168.0.1. Then I would like to have:

- Monowall 192.168.0.5 with default gateway 192.168.0.1 (internet)
- PC# 192.168.0.x with default gateway 192.168.0.5

Is that possible with monowall?

Thank you.

I do not think it is possible to configure m0n0wall, or similar, with only one interface. You can't get past that during the initial setup.

Is there some reason you can't put your modem/router into bridging mode and connect it to m0nowall with its two interfaces? This is by far the most frequently seen configuration for m0nowall and anything similar.

Well, the reason is I have a laptop which I would like to use as firewall. The laptop has only one LAN NIC and if I can do that without having to spend money on one more card and a switch the better.

There should be a way to do it somehow. I came across this post: http://fixunix.com/networking/330455-building-firewall-out-laptop.html . A guy in this thread did so at home.

Good luck.

Unless you're going to use VLAN tagging (which means that you'll have to buy a VLAN capable switch - almost definitely more expensive than an additional network interface for your laptop), having only one physical network interface kind of defeats the purpose of having a firewall in the first place. Now of course if you want to use it for the shaping only, that's a different story, but m0n0wall wasn't designed to be used only as a traffic shaper.

There are USB Ethernet adapters out there for a reasonable price; however, before you buy one, make sure that it appears on this list: http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.3R/hardware-i386.html#ETHERNET

Ok, thanks for the help.