From: "Don Munyak" <don dot munyak at gmail dot com>

> Just out of curiosity, you can buy a netgate m1n1 package tested and
> installed with m0n0wall for around $225 plus shipping. Not considering
> the VIA is a 1G processor, why do you build your boxes. For pretty
> much $25 more, you can get a netgate already built.

All of my units are in production, with some very high use.  This includes 
captive portal, p2p, hacking, and VPN.  That eats up CPU fast.  Also, I plan 
on not having to touch those boxes for a few upgrades, so I purposely 
overbuild.  However, my most common platform is;
http://www.directron.com/p4m80m4combo35.html or
http://www.directron.com/m7vig4comb29.html for my motherboard/cpu.

http://www.directron.com/dm317.html for a case.

A $5 D-link NIC, a $20 256 meg stick, and a $13 Transcend IDE flash.

That is about $165 for a somewhat small, fast and quiet system.  (I remove 
the extra side fan from the case) Even with heavy use, and under a hack 
attempt, I have the power to look at complex logs.  And when you have a bad 
client doing DHCP requests 3 times a second, you want to be able to see the 
"DHCP Leases" page and logs.  And if I need to rack mount, I can use 2 
different $100 cases, http://www.directron.com/sc512l.html (1U) and 
http://www.directron.com/ra251c00f.html (2U).  It also doesn't hurt that 
this place is local. :-)

                        Lee