Linux router recommendation

[Red Squirrel]

Can someone recommend a linux distro I can use as a router? I need a non nat router. I don't need to many features, maybe access control, static routes etc.

As long as it can do non nat and just act as a router. So I want both sides to be accessible from both sides.

 

[xSauronx]

im sorry but....have you ever used google dude? basically if you google linux router its hard to miss 😉

also, i think microtiks routeros can be had for free with some capabilities trimmed. used to be, anyway.

clarkconnect, monowall (bsd but, whatever), ipcop, smoothwall and linux distros you may want to look into.

 

[sourceninja]

Best way is to buy a linksys router and put dd-wrt on it.

 

[Nothinman]

I always use Debian because inevitably I always want to install something else on it later on down the line.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Originally posted by: xSauronx
im sorry but....have you ever used google dude? basically if you google linux router its hard to miss 😉

also, i think microtiks routeros can be had for free with some capabilities trimmed. used to be, anyway.

clarkconnect, monowall (bsd but, whatever), ipcop, smoothwall and linux distros you may want to look into.

Try to google for "linux router" and finding one with no nat. VERY hard to come by. Most of the Linux routers are for NAT routers. I need an actual router, like, a cisco router, but something I can install in a VM and has a web interface.

Ex:

10.10.0.1/24 ----- router ------ 10.10.1.1/24

Say both sides of the network have 5 machines, all 5 have to be able to access all 5 on the other side and vise versa. I just need simple routing.

I also want to avoid spending more money. I already spent more then I wanted to. I got shafted by the dlink router I bought as it has no static route capabilities (which is the most retarded thing EVER, that's a BASIC router feature). I might see if I can trade that router with someone at work or something though and then I wont need to make one in a vm. But that router is a POS considering it's lacking basic features.

Can I use just a regular linux distro to do routing? I'm even thinking of just putting two nics on my vpn server vm and making it act as a router too. Would it just be the thing of setting up static routes in Linux, or would there be more to it then that?

 

[Nothinman]

Try to google for "linux router" and finding one with no nat. VERY hard to come by. Most of the Linux routers are for NAT routers.

All you have to do to make a Linux box a router is tell it to route via /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Is there more to it then that?

I tried to do that (echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward) then on a machine on same network I set the gateway to that box (only has 1 nic though, if that's a problem) who's default gateway is my real router. I was able to ping that machine but nothing online. Since if I can get this working I can probably just make the vpn server the default gateway for all machines on that network, then the vpn will work. The vpn's default gateway will be the real router. I won't be able to access the router through the vpn but any machine who's default gateway is the vpn server I assume I'll be able to access. The machines just need to know how to route to the VPN's range, that's basically what I need.

 

[Nothinman]

I don't think I've ever tried it on a machine with only 1 NIC..

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
I don't think I've ever tried it on a machine with only 1 NIC..

I have. You have all computers plugged into the same physical network, but say some computers are on 192.168.0.x/24 subnet and other computers are on 192.168.1.x/24 subnet. You could use a gateway with a single nic that has two ip addresses assigned to it - one on each subnet. Then it would route traffic like normal or block traffic if you configured iptables/netfilter to do so. Even though the computers with different subnets are plugged in to the same physical hubs, they won't talk to each other without going through the gateway.

To the OP. I use several RHEL virtual machines (CentOS or even Ubuntu would work just as good) as gateways. I do a minimum install of RHEL (uncheck all but the "base" group) and then install webmin to configure the routing and network settings. These do nothing but routing, no firewalling and no NAT.

If I wanted to use a dedicated OS to gateway, I would use m0n0wall or pfsense. pfsense is actually based on m0n0wall, but with added features, so since you don't want any extras anyway, it may be simpler to use m0n0wall. While both of these may default to using NAT, I would almost guarantee that NAT can be disabled.

 

[NoShangriLa]

If you want to learn then start with LRP, OpenWRT, X-Wrt, or LEAF.

Other wise pick a modern distro that you like and run with it, or try anyone of these GUI base.

SmoothWall is the only GUI base I tried back in 2000/2001, other than that I prefer to roll my own LRP, or LEAF if I go to the trouble to buil a router/firewall.