Fireworks and Firewalls

July 4thHappy Fourth of July, all! Cari and I have spent Saturday running errands, and yesterday was a lazy, movie day. Today is shaping up to be a mixture of the two. I think we’re going to go check out the fireworks tonight after I make a huge batch of nachos. Mmm…

Why no posts for a while? A little history: There were a bunch of WatchGuard Firebox X700s sitting around, unused for years at my old job. I got a hold of one and upgraded the RAM and CPU, put quieter fans in it, and loaded pfSense on it. It ran great.

But, the Ethernet interfaces were all 100MBps, and as I programmed the device more and more for the new house, I realized that moving data from one network segment to another was painfully slow with those interfaces and I began hunting for a new system with gigabit Ethernet. I found what I wanted, but needed to order from China. So, on Saturday, June 11, I did just that and then immediately went to some Forums where people had been talking about this appliance and posted that I had ordered one too, and would update everyone on my experience.

That night, sometime after 4:22am on Sunday, my Firebox died. Of course. Almost three weeks later, I finally got the new firewall in, programmed it, put it in place and began using it.

So, with bringing this website in-house a couple of months ago, the entire site was inaccessible until the last few days. Hence, no posts. Hopefully this new firewall is going to last a long time. So far, I love it.

Well, time to go jump in the pool for a bit.