You might be wondering if using an old laptop as a pfSense router is a good idea. In many respects, laptops are good candidates for being repurposed into routers. They are small, energy efficient, and when the AC power shuts off, they run on battery power, so they have a built-in uninterruptable power supply (UPS). Moreover, many old laptops can be purchased relatively cheaply at thrift shops and online.
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pfSense Plus Attack PreventionThere is, however, one critical limitation to using a laptop as a router: in almost all cases, they only have one Ethernet port. Moreover, there is often no realistic way to add another NIC, as there are no expansion slots that will take another NIC (some, however, do have PCMCIA slots that will take a second NIC). There ...
