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Can I reasonably reuse a T520?

Robert Wood

  I now have access to a Lenovo T520 that I would like to repurpose to run Sophos UTM v9.  

  I'm a tinkerer, I've never set up a UTM / FW before, but am interested in giving this a try to better protect my home network (and for the learning experience).

  Any guidance is greatly appreciated.

  My first two questions are:

  1. Can I reasonably reuse my T520 laptop?  I thought I saw a post (but maybe it's from some time ago) that a laptop isn't a good box to use.
  2. Can I use a USB/Ethernet adapter for the 2nd NIC?

  My home network currently consists of a cable modem connected to a TP-Link AC1750 (Archer C7 v2) set up as an Access Point, with all but one device connected to the TP-Link.   I plan on putting the UTM between these two (plus move the one device to the AP and turning on DHCP on the AP).

  Rob Wood



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  • +1

    I am not sure that the USB ethernet adapters are compatible with UTM, I haven't tried for awhile, more likely with the XG.

    In both cases check the hardware compatibility list.

    XG115W - v20.0.2 MR-2 - Home

    XG on VM 8 - v21 GA

    If a post solves your question please use the 'Verify Answer' button.

  • 0 in reply to rfcat_vk

    I started looking through the forums and found a post about XG not yet supporting USB NICs, though it says that UTM does.  

    I'll do some more searching but may give UTM a try first then XG if I can't get UTM to work.

    Thanks for your help.

    Rob

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  • 0 in reply to Robert Wood

    Hi, Rob, and welcome to the UTM Community!

    If all of your devices are wireless, just connect the Ethernet port to your modem and use the wireless NIC for Internal.  If that's not the case, and your AP has no wired ports, you can add an inexpensive wireless router in its place with the WAN port left empty and its DHCP service disabled.  I've done that in the lab, but used a VM so the question of whether my wireless NIC was acceptable did not come up.  Using a VM would also be a workaround for a USB NIC.

    Cheers - Bob

     
    Sophos UTM Community Moderator
    Sophos Certified Architect - UTM
    Sophos Certified Engineer - XG
    Gold Solution Partner since 2005
    MediaSoft, Inc. USA
  • 0 in reply to BAlfson

      Thanks Bob, but I'm not sure I understand.

      Almost all of my devices are wireless, and I could convert the one that's wired to wireless easy enough, though I currently prefer it wired.

      Here's my current config (hopefully this shows up well enough).  My plan is to put the laptop/FW where the red X is, between the cable modem and the AP.

    Given that there's a Smart TV located near the cable modem, I'd prefer to leave that with dishing out LAN IP addresses but I'm guessing I need to switch to the AP doing this.

    Are you proposing that instead of using the TP-LINK as my AP, I could use the laptop's wifi as my AP?

    Rob Wood

     

  • 0 in reply to Robert Wood

    The Laptop WiFi would communicate with your access point, just as do all of the other wireless devices.  I would use the UTM's DHCP to provide IPs on your LAN and assign the IP of the Laptop WiFi as the default gateway.  Does that make sense, Rob?

    Cheers - Bob

     
    Sophos UTM Community Moderator
    Sophos Certified Architect - UTM
    Sophos Certified Engineer - XG
    Gold Solution Partner since 2005
    MediaSoft, Inc. USA
  • 0 in reply to BAlfson

      Makes sense.  I didn't know I could use the wifi as the 2nd nic.  That should work well.  Thank you for the suggestion, Bob.

      Will proximity be an issue?  I was planning to place the laptop with a foot or two of the AP.  I've read that too close can be too close when it comes to wifi.

      Rob Wood

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