Last update:
03/06/2010
Current version:
1.31

Hardware
net5501 board from
Soekris Engineering

m0n0wall is targeted at embedded x86-based PCs. The net48xx/net55xx range from Soekris Engineering (www.soekris.com) and the ALIX platform from PC Engines (www.pcengines.ch) are officially supported. All it takes to get m0n0wall up and running on one of these systems is to download the relevant image and write it to a CF card (16 MB or larger). See Installation for more information.

It is also possible to run m0n0wall on most standard PCs, either by writing the generic-pc image to a small IDE hard disk or CF card, or by using the CD-ROM + floppy disk version. Since m0n0wall is based on FreeBSD, most hardware that works with FreeBSD also works with m0n0wall. See the FreeBSD/i386 Hardware Notes for a detailed listing of supported hardware.

OPNwall m0n0wall appliance
lowpower, fanless, high grade enclosure
from Applianceshop.EU
Affordable 19" appliance
lowpower, fanless firewall
from Applianceshop.EU
A-Enterprise m0n0wall
from A-Enterprise

The recommended amount of RAM for m0n0wall is 64 MB. It might work with less, especially if you don't use a lot of features/services, but there are no guarantees about that – watch out for failing firmware uploads (m0n0wall does not use swap space, so it can't do much about running out of memory).

VLAN tagging
The following drivers/NICs either support VLAN tagging in hardware or handle long frames properly. All other drivers/NICs use software emulation that causes a reduced MTU (which may lead to problems).

  • hardware support: bge, em, gx, ixgb*, msk*, nge, re*, stge*, ti, txp, vge*
  • long frame support: bfe*, dc, fxp, gem*, hme*, le*, rl*, sis, sk*, ste, tx, xl (most)
* = m0n0wall 1.3b only

Polling
The following drivers/NICs support polling mode to improve performance by reducing interrupt overhead (at the expense of a slightly increased forwarding delay). Polling can be enabled on the System: Advanced setup page in m0n0wall.

  • polling support: dc, em, fxp, nge, rl, sis, ste, vr

Wireless
The m0n0wall 1.2x series only support a few 802.11b wireless adapters/chipsets (most notably Lucent Hermes and Intersil Prism II/2.5. m0n0wall 1.3b, which is based on FreeBSD 6, supports (almost) all Atheros-based 802.11a/b/g cards as well (and some Ralink cards too).

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© 2003-2010 by Manuel Kasper <mk@neon1.net>. All rights reserved.