Must Read: Samsung Galaxy S4 review

Topic: Hardware

Cheap Firewall or PBX appliance for $93

Summary: With all the great open source appliance software available for free such as Asterisk PBX or IPCop/Copfilter, it doesn't do you much good if you don't have a box to run it on.  You can certainly use an old and noisy desktop computer or even build a cheap computer yourself, but rarely will you find something sleek and silent like an old or refurbished Dell OptiPlex PC.

George Ou

By George Ou for Real World IT |

With all the great open source appliance software available for free such as Asterisk PBX or IPCop/Copfilter, it doesn't do you much good if you don't have a box to run it on.  You can certainly use an old and noisy desktop computer or even build a cheap computer yourself, but rarely will you find something sleek and silent like an old or refurbished Dell OptiPlex PC.  Dell is very good at keeping their machines silent.  With all the testing and building I've done, I can tell you it isn't easy or cheap to build something small and silent.

Since I'm looking for a cheap appliance for Asterisk and IPCop/Copfilter, it's just my luck to see this deal on a refurbished Dell OptiPlex PC.  You'll note that the listed price is $47.91 but I've added the $12.95 for the memory bump to 256 MB and the $31.95 FedEx ground shipping to come up with a rounded up $93 figure for the title of this blog so I don't deceive anyone about the price.  This is a 700 MHz Celeron which is plenty fast for building your own VoIP server with Asterisk and your own gateway level antivirus scanning system using IPCop and Copfilter.  Some of you may have noticed how much I despise desktop antivirus solutions because they pose their own security risks and slow you down like crazy and this is the perfect cure for anyone who hates a slow PC.  Gateway level protection protects all your PCs at the same time and it caches websites which accelerates Windows Update like crazy.

Sure this isn't as nice as a tiny fanless appliance which is the ideal solution for something like this, but this is three times cheaper.  The only other option is running a virtual IPCop/Copfilter machine within a powerful media center PC that also serves as a gigabit terabyte file server.  Since there are free versions of VMware Server and Microsoft Virtual Server, this has become a very feasible option as well so long as you don't mind the dependency where a reboot of the media center PC also takes down your gateway.

Topic: Hardware

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily email newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

Talkback

33 comments
Log in or register to join the discussion

  • Very cool

    Thanks for the info!
    ahinkle
    Reply Vote

  • Good for those Quad Core Boxes

    What where you going to do with that 3rd and 4th core anyway?
    nucrash
    Reply Vote

    • Cheap higher end sempron will do

      You don't need a lot of CPU for the virtual appliance. A higher end Sempron or a cheaper Core 2 Duo with motherboard package for $199 will do just fine for a media center / gigabit file server / Virtual Appliance host.
      georgeou
      Reply Vote

  • And

    WHAT does this have to do with the Novell/MS 'deal'??

    Hugh George? Hugh!!!!

    ;)
    D T Schmitz
    Reply Vote

    • Don't know, it just gets more people using Linux

      How can that be a bad thing right? Linux is sneaking its way in to the home and making itself more prominent.
      georgeou
      Reply Vote

      • Right!

        Thanks George. :)
        D T Schmitz
        Reply Vote

  • I've seen them used as internet computers...

    at an Internet cafe I used before I got hooked up at home. They're quite nice, and I agree they are good for firewalls and PBX. Didn't know they were THAT cheap, though. Thanks George! :)
    Tony Agudo
    Reply Vote

    • I didn't know either :). I wouldn't have bothered building something.

      It's really hard to build something silent, even harder when it's small. These boxes are amazingly silent as will Dell machines in general.
      georgeou
      Reply Vote

  • Cost compared to the E-Way Fanless Guy....

    So, it's obvious that the old Dell is cheaper from the outset, but in the article you linked to you mentioned that the E-Way fanless devices only used something like 20W.

    I'm guessing just based on my own old Optiplex (an old PIII 800Mhz) that yours uses 150-200W or so.

    Now, I have no idea since I don't pay the electric bill, but about how much of a difference in cost does that make after a year or so of use? In other words, how long would it take before the difference in power usage ate up the savings you made on the initial Dell purchase? I seriously have no idea - it could be 50 years before it became an issue for all that I know.
    multanihl
    Reply Vote

    • Not even close.

      "So, it's obvious that the old Dell is cheaper from the outset, but in the article you linked to you mentioned that the E-Way fanless devices only used something like 20W."

      20 watts peak is about right, it's actually less than that on average.

      "I'm guessing just based on my own old Optiplex (an old PIII 800Mhz) that yours uses 150-200W or so."

      Not even close. It uses more power than the E-Way fanless system, but it's not even close. We're talking about 40 to 50 watt range with a peak consumption of 80 watts. Sempron 1.6 GHz systems run around 65 watts idle. My Pentium 4 2.4 GHz with Hyperthreading uses around 70 watts idle and maybe 110 peak and that's what I'm going to be using for my media center, file server, and virtual appliance host.

      The way it works out is that 100 watts of continuous power averages around $7 a month.
      georgeou
      Reply Vote

      • Forgot to take out the monitor...

        ...when I was figuring power consumption - those CRT bad boys like the one I had on the old Optiplex suck up quite a bit.

        My only worry would be that naturally, since there are moving parts in the Dell then the chance that something will die on you is greater, all other things being (roughly) equal.
        multanihl
        Reply Vote

        • The E-Way TK system will have an HDD too

          The 700 MHz TK system from E-Way will have a 2.5" hard drive. You need the drive to do Internet web caching. You could do it with a 2 GB $35 Compact Flash card, but you wouldn't be caching very much data though it would probably be enough for most things. You could put the same card in the Dell machine and not have a hard drive as well. Again, you want more storage for a chaching box. A PBX with Voice mail will probably be ok with 2 GBs of flash but again, it would cut its capacity a bit short.
          georgeou
          Reply Vote

          • Yeah

            I was thinking more of the cooling fans in the Dell, actually. A buddy of mine had fits with his after the fan on it died, and it turns out that Dell doesn't use standard 80 or 120mm fans (at least they didn't in his machine - seems like the stock fan was ever-so-slightly smaller). He ended up using plastic twists to hold a 120 in place, which was effective enough (and quite hilarious to look at).

            But you're right - to really get your use out of either machine you would need a hard drive, which would most likely die out long before the fan on a Celeron machine, so it probably wouldn't matter.
            multanihl
            Reply Vote

          • Celeron 700 will not die without fan, just lock up

            I agree that the fanless TK system is the best way to go. It is also very small making it the IDEAL candidate for these sorts of appliances. But even when you're ordering this thing all the way from Taiwan with a money order, the whole solution costs more than $300 when you include shipping and the HDD. Compared with the $800 appliances people try to sell based on these things, it's WELL WORTH IT.

            However, $320 is not within everyone's budget and people want a cheaper alternative. This cheap Dell system is a great way to go.

            You're right that the fan is not standard but I'm sure you can rig some kind of 80 or 120 mm fan in there if you ever need to replace it. Nice thing about the Dells is that they don't use a CPU fan, they use a CPU duct which funnels to an opening with a larger fan. 700 MHz Celeron just happens to be the perfect speed for IPCop/Copfilter or Asterisk because it's fast enough and sub-GHz CPUs do not use a whole lot of power.
            georgeou
            Reply Vote

          • Definitely Come Out Ahead

            No doubt that you would come out ahead; you could buy two to have a backup/spare parts and still come out rosy (compared to the TK). The fan quip was just an anecdote (you still had to see the thing!), and hard drives, in my experience, fail much more frequently than fans, provided you keep your case and fan mounts cleaned out on a reasonable basis. Besides, I think it's far better to actually find uses for older machines than just scrapping them when they can still be practically used, right?
            multanihl
            Reply Vote

          • I'd rather have the TK system honestly

            I'd rather have the TK system honestly, but you definitely pay for the small size and no fans. It would probably take 5 years to recover the electrical savings but something like this would actually last 5 years so in the end it would work out. It's just that not everyone has the $320 to spend up front for something like this.
            georgeou
            Reply Vote

  • Wait a few hours

    Technology will change! ;)

    Slightly off topic George, but, I was reminded of [url=http://www.neoware.com/specs/Neoware-m100.pdf]this new product[/url], which has EVERYTHING to with security--right up your alley!

    [u][b]No moving parts[/u][/b], thin-client, Windows XPe or Linux.

    Price in the $700 range, reasonable, considering the risks of losing data (HIPAA and Sarbanes/Oxley).

    I am definitely going to be sporting one of these as soon as the Linux version comes out.

    Thanks for allowing a slight digression.
    D T Schmitz
    Reply Vote

    • But a real laptop is cheaper and better and faster

      I don't want a thin client, I want a real client. I can deal with using EFS encryption, it's easy to do.
      georgeou
      Reply Vote

      • This laptop

        doesn't store any local data and retains all the bennys of toting a laptop--that's the point--a solution to a BIG problem--stolen laptops with sensitive data.

        RDP/X encrypted thin-client layer only to home base.

        As such, it doesn't require a lot of processing power to be fast since it's only a remote frame buffer.

        No muss. No fuss.
        Very elegant solution.
        D T Schmitz
        Reply Vote

        • That is precisely what I do NOT want

          "doesn't store any local data and retains all the bennys of toting a laptop--that's the point--a solution to a BIG problem--stolen laptops with sensitive data."

          No local data means it's worthless without a highspeed connection. Having a laptop means I can do actual work on a moving train or air plane. I can also watch stored movies and TV shows on the laptop. I cannot imagine what I would do on the road without a real laptop.

          There are plenty of ways to secure data on a laptop. The problem is not the lack of technology, the problem is lack of use. I do not want a glorified dumb terminal. I LIKE having local processing and local data. Paying for a glorified dumb terminal does not appeal to me let alone paying MORE money for a dumb terminal. A nice Core Duo laptop only costs $700.
          georgeou
          Reply Vote
CNET Join | Log In | Privacy | Cookies Close