By gateway, I mean router/firewall/whatever box that sits between your LAN and the internet. Reasonable choices: - ISP-provided / sanctioned device (combo wireless router and modem) - ISP modem + user provided wireless router + possibly running custom firmware like CeroWRT or OpenWRT - ISP modem + PC acting as router + lots of possible software (pfsense, debian, whatever) For a variety of reasons I've always used PCs. But which PCs are best for this? Here's an interesting pair of articles on using little PCs as gateways: <http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/04/the-ars-guide-to-building-a-linux-router-from-scratch/> <http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/09/the-router-rumble-ars-diy-build-faces-better-tests-tougher-competition/> My previous gateways were SFF business PCs from a previous millenium. Built like tanks. Reliable. Running full Red Hat Linux, so quite familiar, versatile, and powerful. But they eat more electricity than they should. And they are not silent. My next generation, years in the making, is here. I've chosen to use two different Zotac Zbox tiny PCs. - the CI321 is a fanless box with two ethernet ports (two is the minimum for a pleasant router). - the RI323 has a fan and two ethernet ports. It is more fully-featured and I got it cheap. It even has two 2.5" drive bays. Both these us low power Haswell processors: The Celeron 2961Y. This means no AES-NI instructions :-( Both use Realtek chips for the ethernet ports. I understand that they have a mediocre record. There are a lot of nice-looking candidate PCs that you can order from China. Some with 4 ethernet ports. Unfortunately, the affordable one all use Baytrail or newer Atom cores (eg. J1900). This is what the newer Ars article recommends. But I would not use that processor because Intel has left a bug in the power management / clocking code of the Linux kernel for a couple of years. Who wants an unreliable gateway? <https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109051> I'm prompted to write this by a current sale and rebate on the Zboxes (rebate offer ends with this month). <http://www.ncix.com/detail/zotac-zbox-ri323-barebone-mini-38-130690.htm> <http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=26671130690&vpn=ZBOX-RI323-U&manufacture=Zotac> <http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=DH8888119815> <http://www.mirhelp.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Oct-Mail-In-Rebate-Form-F-MIR1016-NCIX.pdf> Summary: - about $170 - $20 rebate for the RI323 - about $185 - $15 rebate for the CI321 Each needs a disk and RAM added.