In a quick conclusion I’ll say this:

If you are the type of user that had to lean over and ask your 15 year old son/daughter (this includes google >:) ) what a “firewall” is, I recommend you stick with either your purchased Linksys/Netgear (that I hope) you are using, with the understanding that the security they provide is quite minimal, especially if you followed the “1, 2, 3, GO!” instructions.. or you can download IPCOP and use that for the same basic features.  Don’t worry about the addons, installing them is probably the most difficult thing I mentioned in this article.

If you are the type of person that has at least heard the terms Firewall, Port, Anti-Virus, and Anti-Spyware – then I definitely recommend you take a look at Endian and see if you can dust off that old computer you had 10 years ago and put it to use.  All it requires is two network cards, one to go to your internet, one to go to your LAN.

If you’re a technically skilled person like myself, and enjoy tinkering and messing with your computers – I invite you to give Vyatta or PFSense a try and come back and tell me what you think.  Are they user friendly? Is their default setup easy enough for mom and pop to install, plug in and google?  Is their webpage nicely built and logical? etc.

Hope this blog was helpful, or at least in some way insightful, for most of you.

Happy googling!

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