This weekend project was a firewall using pfsense 2 and a kit from netgate. I've included the steps to build it and a bill of materials below for those who would like to do something similar. I found shipping was fast to my north east US location. Thank Netgate!

Tools

Bill of Materials

WiFi Note: I saved a few bucks by using antennas I already had, but you can get the whole wireless stuff as a kit with pigtails and antenna at Netgate with the DCMA82-DUAL-P192C34 kit. A single antenna option also exists.

Color Note: Last I saw, Netgate was out of the blue color. Red, Silver and Black are also available. I've used the black in most of my other situations. It just seem more appropriately businessy ™. You may get a performance boost if you use the Red case and put a NOS sticker on it, but I haven't tried this yet. Please report back if you attempt that modification.

Steps to Build

BIOS Note: A lot of instructions tell you to upgrade the ALIX BIOS, but I found I already had the updated BIOS and I expect you will too so you can ignore those. In fact, you should be able to do this without touching the serial port at all.

Click to Enlarge

1. Download pfSense-2.0-RELEASE-2g-i386-nanobsd.img.gz
2. Get the CF card mounted on your computer
3. unzip the pfSense image
4. Copy the image to the CF Card (dd if=pfSense-2.0-RELEASE-2g-i386-nanobsd.img of=/dev/sdb)
5. Put the CF card into the slot on the ALIX.2D13 board
6. Do not screw anything down yet (you may need to pull the CF Card and that means taking it all apart)
7. Connect a computer to the LAN port (next to USB) using a crossover cable or through a switch
8. Connect the power to the power jack
9. Go to http://192.168.1.1 and login to your pfsense firewall and start configuring
10. Disconnect power and LAN
11. Screw the ALIX board into the case
12. Snap the DCMA-82 Atheros 6G into the slot of the ALIX board
13. Fit the big end of the pigtail through the holes in the side of the bottom of the case (Hint: flat part of conector should face up.)
14. Snap the other end of the pigtail into the Wifi card
15. Complete config and make sure it all is working as you desire
16. Screw the top on the case

Serial Connect

First, if you can get to the WebUI, then you can turn on SSH which will give you access to almost all the power of the Serial port. Still, serial access can be helpful.

If you wish to use the serial port for debugging boot problems you will need the tools mentioned in the optional list above. For USB to Serial, I have a USA-19HS from Keyspan that has worked fine on Mac and Linux computers.

If you want to see the BIOS when starting the device, you'll need to set minicom or your terminal emulator to 38400 8n1. I changed this to 9600 so that it was the same as pfsense to save me from having to change my terminal config. To make change to the ALIX BIOS press 's' while the ram test is running and then press the key next to the options you want to change. Don't forget to change your config to the new values.

Conclusion

Look at you! You just built a firewall. Ain't you smart? Yes, this costs a good bit more than putting together a DD-WRT box from a Linksys WRT54G. There are a couple reasons this is better. First, it runs pfsense. Second, I built it myself. Third, I can choose my own color. Fourth, I get to write about something here that not everyone knows about. Fifth, geek points.

Also, have you compared the specs to the WRT54G? Here's the wikipedia page for the WRT54G series. (Hint: 1/2 the processor, 1/4 the RAM, no expansion, no Serial port, no USB, larger, etc.)

• CPU: 500 MHz AMD Geode LX800 CPU
• DRAM: 256MB DDR DRAM
• Storage: Operating system and application stored on CompactFlash card (removable)
• Size: 6" x 6" (152.4 x 152.4 mm)
• Expansion: 1 miniPCI slots, LPC bus
• I/O: DB9 serial port, dual USB port