[ale] Firewall discussion...hardware horsepower?

[Chris Woodfield]

As an adjunct to the firewall discussion, I'm looking at upgrading 
mine...I'm currently running a Via EDEN 500 based box which does strict 
packet filtering and connection tracking fine, but starts to have 
issues when I turn on any sort of packet logging and/or IDS. I also 
would like something I can rackmount in a 1U case.

Obviously I don't need a 3 GHz Pentium 4 and a gig a RAM for this; 
would would be the minimum suggested system to use here? I'm basically 
looking to run iptables in a one-to-one NAT config for some hosts and 
one-to-many NAT for others, and do blocked packet logging, snort, and 
some small servers (DHCP, SNMP for generating MRTG graphs, and possibly 
a SOCKS proxypot as well).

Also, suggestions for cheap 1U rackmount cases are welcome as well (I'm 
leaning towards SuperMicro's SC512)...

  Thanks for the input,

-Chris