Thoughts on using an old laptop and usb3 ethernet dongle?

[WeiWang]

I am quite pressed for cash at the moment but really want to setup an opensense router (as my old router died so I have the option of buying some cheap less-than-ideal off the shelf router or opensense on an old laptop). I do have an old 8460p HP elitebook that, in its day at least, was quite the beast. I was thinking with 16gb mem, an old i7, and gigabit ethernet it would have ample horsepower but I was:
1) Not sure if it was realistic/compatible.
2) Not sure about coupling it with a usb2ethernet dongle on a 3.0 usb port would be workable.
I found one unanswered post asking about this generally, and another posting about problems with a ethernet/usb dongle.
Any general thoughts or experiences would be super appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Don't.

Laptop: unreliable.
USB network: unreliable if working at all.

[yourfriendarmando]

It sounds like it'll be hard to manage, but as long as you can test it like a server, turn off any suspend power management, and in each interface, tick [X] Prevent interface removal. Hopefully you can set it up then migrate it to a new system with little effort

[Seimus]

Its definitely doable but it can come with great sacrifice on your nerves. AS you mentioned the main problem you could start to hit is due to the USB2ETH dongles, you get the wrongs ones and you will go crazy.

Additional to this, form factor + Power drawn is too much in my opinion. And the CPU maybe OK but its already too old for modern systems.

Depending on what is your budged you can try to look for used miniPC with multiport setup and a CPU that has AES-NI support.

I wouldn't use laptop for this mainly as state by @Patrick M. Hausen.

Regards,
S.

[chemlud]

Simply try it out and see where you end. If you don't need maximum network performance try usb2 adapters instead. If it works you can safe the config, replace the interface names in config.xml and import it to an opnsense on a more appropriate hardware. It's the way I started with sense in the time...

[opnfwb]

I've used a laptop as a firewall for several years however, I DID NOT use USB NICs.

That laptop has an ExpressCard slot. If you must use it as a router, get a gigabit ExpressCard on amazon/ebay/newegg and use that instead. It will be much more reliable than a USB NIC.

The only negative is most of the ExpressCard NICs are going to be realtek based. Still not optimal but it'll get you by until you can get better hardware for the router.

[Maurice]

Nothing wrong with using a spare laptop imho (for non-critical home use only of course). I've had good results with older Dell Latitudes running as home servers 24/7 for years without a fuss. Integrated KVM and UPS is a bonus. 

Avoiding USB Ethernet is a good call though. Use VLANs, a managed switch and the laptop's single integrated NIC instead (probably Intel, which works nicely). No strict need for multiple NICs.

Cheers
Maurice