Making a router

[Intelman07]

I'm intrested in making a router myself, I was just wondering what software I could use for that. I know many are available but, the most important thing is I need/want wireless support. Along with this, I was wondering what would be the best wireless NIC to get that would be most compatable and such, if anyone actually knew that information.

EDIT: Like should something like this be fine link.

It is so cheap, and cheap is good, cause I need more than one of these

 

[Red Squirrel]

Woah 3 bucks for a network card? If I lived in the US I'd be buying a few hundred of them and selling them on ebay for 5 bucks. LOL

If you just want the router to act as internet firewall, and that you'll connect another router to it, then you can probably get away with like an old P3 system, but if you want it to actually serve your network, like do DHCP and all, you'll need something decent since any communication will be done through the router. If you take the look at the specs for firewall devices like Sonicwall, they're pretty high, and it may actually be cheaper to get a premade one then to build, but building does allow you to completely choose what OS you want, etc and gives way more config options. for wireless, the easiest way would be to hook up a normal wireless router to it.

 

[Intelman07]

Ok, well I have a MN-700 that can be an Access point, which should be fine for wireless then, and I have a P4 system I can use for this. (1.6) about like i dunno 5 years old. It should run things quite well then. Even with those cards being taht cheap, do you think they'd work just fine? I've never heard of this brand.

 

[BlueWeasel]

What about something like SmoothWall?

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
If you just want the router to act as internet firewall, and that you'll connect another router to it, then you can probably get away with like an old P3 system, but if you want it to actually serve your network, like do DHCP and all, you'll need something decent since any communication will be done through the router.

What exactly is so demanding about dhcp? Unless you're doing a tonne of encryption at the router (like for a vpn or something) it's not really going to matter much.

 

[Crusty]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel

If you just want the router to act as internet firewall, and that you'll connect another router to it, then you can probably get away with like an old P3 system, but if you want it to actually serve your network, like do DHCP and all, you'll need something decent since any communication will be done through the router.

Uhmm... smoothwall on a on p133 box ran perfectly on a network with 50+ clients on it. All with dhcp...

If you are talking about filesharing, domain controlling.. and other tasks that are for a SERVER, then obviously it should be a faster box. But for simple routing, any old junker will work just fine.

 

[Intelman07]

Now I have another intersting question, If I use an access point for wireless, do I only need two nics then? One for teh cable modem, and one for the switch which has a built in 4 port switch and wireless?

 

[BW86]

Originally posted by: BlueWeasel
What about something like SmoothWall?

was just going to recommend this

Make your own Hardend Internet Firewall

 

[Nothinman]

If you just want the router to act as internet firewall, and that you'll connect another router to it, then you can probably get away with like an old P3 system, but if you want it to actually serve your network, like do DHCP and all, you'll need something decent since any communication will be done through the router. If you take the look at the specs for firewall devices like Sonicwall, they're pretty high, and it may actually be cheaper to get a premade one then to build, but building does allow you to completely choose what OS you want, etc and gives way more config options. for wireless, the easiest way would be to hook up a normal wireless router to it.

A 486 can easily saturate a 10Mb connection just passing packets, the CPU is only important if you make it with things like huge ACL lists, encryption, etc. Things like DNS, DHCP, etc take virtually no CPU time. Memory might be an issue if you want to use them but bind9 only uses ~7M and dhcpd ~2M so as long as you have at least 16M of memory you should be fine.

 

[phisrow]

http://www.m0n0.ch/wall/