How-To: Build your own network firewall by Engadget is a step-by-step guide to create your own Firewall using a Linux live-CD and a thumbdrive. It’s not unlike what I used to have during my university days. I (actually, it’s a ‘we’ effort, with a friend) setup a distro called SmoothWall running on an old Pentium PC that act as a firewall, DHCP server and Internet gateway.

What I found interesting in the article was the placement of the WiFi device outside of the network, in the DMZ. It looks safer but is it really necessary? I’m curious to experiment but currently do not have the means to do so.

Anyone had such a setup before? Can someone connected via WiFi ’see’ the internal network? Logically, the answer would be a ‘yes’ but that would also mean if someone compromise the wireless network (quite common these days), they would be able to enter the network as well? So does placing it inside the DMZ help?