Using as a PC as a Router/Gateway device, how many of you do it?

[najames]

This COULD be a really good topic. How about a discussion of what hardware/software you use, why, and what works or doesn't work instead of flaming each other?

I am in the need for something, not trusting my old WRT54G v2 router right now, factory firmware. It totally crashed recently, I had to power it down and back up to get it to run again, wife was not happy.

My options are:

1) use the Cisco E4200 (64MB RAM/16MB flash, 480MHz processor, Simultaneous 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) I bought at Costco $134+, unopened waiting until I decide, today??

2) If I build a new PC, ITX boards are limited to one LAN port, one slot, looking at a E-350 type board, need case, etc too, or barebones setup. USB WIFI, onboard + one additional LAN??? I have a couple good Intel gigabit cards plus a couple other decent cards from previous testing, a couple old WIFI devices, but both are G though.

3) using an existing PC, trying to combine router functions on my SageTV server (Visa), mATX would need to stick in another NIC or two + something for wireless. Networking can't interfere with TV recording, especially if the NFL ever resumes play!!

4) testing an unRaid server, might be able to incorporate it on here too

Right now I have this setup below, it's worked for quite a while, but I keep adding stuff and it needs updating.

Netopia DSL modem (6Mbps) ===> WRT54G ===> HP Procurve 24port gigabit switch ===> Lots of PCs, VOIP, laser printer, wireless laptop, android smartphone

 

[Geofram]

This COULD be a really good topic. How about a discussion of what hardware/software you use, why, and what works or doesn't work instead of flaming each other?

I am in the need for something, not trusting my old WRT54G v2 router right now, factory firmware. It totally crashed recently, I had to power it down and back up to get it to run again, wife was not happy.

My options are:

1) use the Cisco E4200 (64MB RAM/16MB flash, 480MHz processor, Simultaneous 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) I bought at Costco $134+, unopened waiting until I decide, today??

2) If I build a new PC, ITX boards are limited to one LAN port, one slot, looking at a E-350 type board, need case, etc too, or barebones setup. USB WIFI, onboard + one additional LAN??? I have a couple good Intel gigabit cards plus a couple other decent cards from previous testing, a couple old WIFI devices, but both are G though.

3) using an existing PC, trying to combine router functions on my SageTV server (Visa), mATX would need to stick in another NIC or two + something for wireless. Networking can't interfere with TV recording, especially if the NFL ever resumes play!!

4) testing an unRaid server, might be able to incorporate it on here too

Right now I have this setup below, it's worked for quite a while, but I keep adding stuff and it needs updating.

Netopia DSL modem (6Mbps) ===> WRT54G ===> HP Procurve 24port gigabit switch ===> Lots of PCs, VOIP, laser printer, wireless laptop, android smartphone

I can't comment on that specific router; I have no experience with it. Just a general mistrust of SOHO devices from my experience. Part of the draw of the home PC as a router for people is the re-use of 'old' hardware (so we don't have to buy a new PC).

I will say that most of the home-made routers have problems or very specific requirements for setting up wireless out of them. I just use my old router as an Access Point; it does that well enough; so don't plan on making a home pc router a wireless AP unless you read up on it and get the right hardware. Intel NICs are good though; most builds (Untangle, Astaro, pfSense, etc) support or recommend using Intel NICs.

You CAN combine it into a virtual machine as well. I've personally never tried it, but heard good results. YMMV here, so I'd figure out specifically what OS you'd be using and install it on a VM, and see how it works before totally committing to do it that way. I can't see why it wouldn't work fine, and there's no reason it should interfere with recording or other jobs the PC is doing.

 

[Ghiddy]

It doesn't matter if it is a pc or a router you bought they both are doing the same thing, running OS on a cpu. Poke around inside that router you have and it will likely be running linux or uclinux. How someone thinks that running the same software on a pc somehow invalidates that software I can't understand. The only difference would be power requirements because the embedded gear uses less power. Take a SBC and attach a compact flash card and run pfsense and you have the same thing as a hardware router you buy off the shelf.

This reminds me of something I've wondered about but never bothered to look into: Can tomato / ddwrt be run on a PC? Are they just linux distros + firewall software?

 

[najames]

This reminds me of something I've wondered about but never bothered to look into: Can tomato / ddwrt be run on a PC? Are they just linux distros + firewall software?

I thought about this too, but the 3rd party software seems to depend on very specific hardware, usually a Broadcom or Atheros (sp?) chip. Most motherboards come with Realtek stuff, sigh. Scroll through the page linked below and look at all the supported hardware, the top of the page lists all manufacturers.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices#Asus

I'm with ya Geofram, a typo, SageTV will run on Vista 64, not a Visa, DOH. I have 8GB of RAM in this PC, intended to use for VMs, but couldn't get a motherboard that would run vt-d hypervisor stuff. I don't know if VBox or something else might work on this though. So many choices, so little time.

If I'm running it 24/7, gotta be a low power PC. The SageTV box (i3-550) pulls 35W from the wall at idle with only one laptop drive, looking at comparing unRaid an server vs Flexraid all on one box too. Headaches.

 

[lord_emperor]

Used to have a machine running Smoothwall, more recently my CentOS web server was also my router.

Since my ISP gave me a modem+router combo I don't bother.

 

[najames]

A free wireless combo? If so, nice of them.

AT&T wanted an extra charge PER MONTH for a wireless combo last I knew. I don't want to talk to AT&T if I can help it, took them 6 months usually multiple calls per month, just to fix my bills.

Hey, you need the spare Matrox MGA graphics card I have here, says 1996 on it, still works but current Windows didn't like it, checked power draw vs onboard. I think I also have a spare Pentuim 200 MMX here somewhere too!! Wife is using my old athlon PC as a planter box.


"Intel Pentium II 400 @ 448MHz | 128MB PC133 @ 112MHz | WD Caviar 814MB 3600RPM
Diamond 16MB video card, can't find drivers | Seriously dented white case
Unlabeled PSU with "115W" written on it in felt marker
14" Dell CRT, 640x480 @ 45Hz | Windows 98 SE"

 

[Jimmah]

This COULD be a really good topic. How about a discussion of what hardware/software you use, why, and what works or doesn't work instead of flaming each other?

I am in the need for something, not trusting my old WRT54G v2 router right now, factory firmware. It totally crashed recently, I had to power it down and back up to get it to run again, wife was not happy.

My options are:

1) use the Cisco E4200 (64MB RAM/16MB flash, 480MHz processor, Simultaneous 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) I bought at Costco $134+, unopened waiting until I decide, today??

2) If I build a new PC, ITX boards are limited to one LAN port, one slot, looking at a E-350 type board, need case, etc too, or barebones setup. USB WIFI, onboard + one additional LAN??? I have a couple good Intel gigabit cards plus a couple other decent cards from previous testing, a couple old WIFI devices, but both are G though.

3) using an existing PC, trying to combine router functions on my SageTV server (Visa), mATX would need to stick in another NIC or two + something for wireless. Networking can't interfere with TV recording, especially if the NFL ever resumes play!!

4) testing an unRaid server, might be able to incorporate it on here too

Right now I have this setup below, it's worked for quite a while, but I keep adding stuff and it needs updating.

Netopia DSL modem (6Mbps) ===> WRT54G ===> HP Procurve 24port gigabit switch ===> Lots of PCs, VOIP, laser printer, wireless laptop, android smartphone

Jetway makes an ITX board with two NIC's, I forget the name but the egg has it.

Main gateway router:
Via Epia PD6000E 600mhz (dual lan)
random PCI NIC
512mb ddr
8gb CF card
120w PSU hacked up to fit homemade case

Neighborhood gateway/captive portal router:
Via M10000 1ghz
DLink Atheros wifi card
4gb CF card
pico PSU with homemade battery backup
cordless power drill plastic case


I have a friend who has an Alix board with tri LAN ports running some linux distro with IP tables, works fine for him and only takes 5-10w under load.

 

[Modelworks]

The problem you see with SOHO routers rarely is the hardware , it is more a lack of qualified programmers. Programmers in the embedded world that know and understand the hardware are getting scarce. You need to have a mix of electrical engineering and programming knowledge and unfortunately what we are seeing more of is people that only have programming knowledge. They are given a development kit for the hardware and an IDE to write code in and that becomes the limit of the knowledge. If they write code and it doesn't work like they think it should they complain to the IDE creator or the development kit programmers. Those programmers can decide to fix the issue or ignore it. People who are part engineer don't depend on the development kits, they pull up datasheets and if there is something that isn't running right in the code, they code around it and fix the problem. Those people understand how the hardware works on a circuit level and how that translates up to a higher language like C or C++. The reason those people are on the decline is they are retiring . It takes years to learn the hardware on that level and years more to learn the programming. I see so much hardware every day that goes to waste due to poor firmware. Things that could have been stellar products because the hardware is there but nobody chose to make use of it.

 

[Modelworks]

This reminds me of something I've wondered about but never bothered to look into: Can tomato / ddwrt be run on a PC? Are they just linux distros + firewall software?

Most of the embedded chips in routers and firewall boxes are running some form of linux or BSD. There are other options like RTOS which are real time operating systems designed for embedded use that doesn't translate well to the pc. Some of the more popular embedded OS:
http://www.uclinux.org/
http://www.mvista.com/
http://www.freertos.org/
http://www.micrium.com/page/products/rtos/os-ii
http://www.segger.com/cms/embedded-software.html


Segger is my personal favorite as their support is top notch. If any of those have a pc version of the router software your gear uses then porting to pc is fairly easy.

 

[Icecold]

This COULD be a really good topic. How about a discussion of what hardware/software you use, why, and what works or doesn't work instead of flaming each other?

I am in the need for something, not trusting my old WRT54G v2 router right now, factory firmware. It totally crashed recently, I had to power it down and back up to get it to run again, wife was not happy.

I definitely recommend at least trying the PC as a router. Even a several year old Pentium 3 will be significantly faster than most SOHO routers, and are given away for free. Add a couple nics on the cheap, and you have a router.

I'm extremely happy with mine. I probably will build a machine specifically for it(have a very low power single core atom box i may use), rather than the power hungry Pentium 4 I'm using now, but wanted to throw it together with spare parts.

Ever since I first got broadband years and years ago, having the internet quit working and needing to power cycle the modem and router was commonplace, and the SOHO routers I was using weren't the cheapest crap I could buy. DD-WRT seemed to help vs factory firmware, but I NEVER have to reboot my IPCop box. I've had to power cycle the modem once or twice since getting Wideband(and both times on days we had real bad storms) but the IPCop box is stable as can be. And that's when pushing 6-7 megabytes/sec through it(so right around 50megabit)

Definitely recommend!

 

[VivienM]

I've been running FreeBSD routers for a decade. Current box is a Compaq SFF thing I bought for around $129 'refurbished' in about 2003 or 2004. C600, 15G HD, however much PC100 RAM I had lying around, etc. Runs great.

From a few years ago:
11:58AM up 688 days, 8:54, 1 user, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

Unfortunately, my landlord was doing electrical maintenance work that took longer than my UPS could handle, so that was the end of the 2-year uptime

At the end of the day, my view:
1) Reliability. This thing can take 800 connections' worth of torrent stuff and not blink. It just keeps going and going and going and going, without any kind of failure or the need to restart anything.
And FreeBSD's natd doesn't kill idle TCP connections after 30-60 minutes like some consumer routers do.
2) Software. I'm running a proper internal DNS setup with BIND. Running a full ISC DHCPd. Etc. Those things have a lot more features than the simplistic servers in consumer routers or DD-WRT.
3) IPv6. You want IPv6? Get a tunnel from HE.net, and boom.
4) The downside? Good luck finding implementations for hacks like UPnP that seem to be required for some things like games (EA, I'm looking at you).
5) If you're not a *NIX guru, expect it to take a while to get things running just right. But once it's setup, it just keeps going and going...

I've been looking for a more power-efficient modern setup (just bought a 30G SSD for it, actually), but it's bloody hard to find a miniITX mobo with dual Ethernet ports and an Intel CPU (either Atom, eww, or a low power SB). Using a PCI/PCI-E Ethernet card requires a bigger case. USB Ethernet has a poor reputation.
And the Hotburst Pentium tragedy means that all the $100-150 off-lease Dell/Lenovo SFF "refurbs" available everywhere are serious, serious power guzzlers... and that won't change until 45nm C2Ds get old enough.

 

[cmetz]

Claims that Linux or BSD are a toy and always doomed to failure are elitism and just plain wrong. The issue is suitability for purpose, and it's more a business issue than technical.

Free distributions of Linux or BSD are NOT for the faint of heart or experience, and aren't generally intended for enteprise-grade networking use. Paid appliance versions of Linux or BSD do have support and do have customizations for purpose, and they move you in a more "enterprise grade" direction if that's what your environment needs.

For home or small business, in the hands of a person who knows what they're doing, using a PC and free software for a router can work fine. I've done it for years, so have lots of people I know. What do you think most SOHO devices run? Embedded Linux, not fundamentally different than what you'd set up yourself.

For a medium to large enterprise, where things are more complex and downtime matters, you want more features, you want a product with more field experience in similar environment, and you want a TAC you can blame -- er, call for assistance -- when it breaks. A lot of network appliances sold into medium and large enterprises actually run embedded Linux or BSD on them, but that's not YOUR problem to set up and make work, it's the vendor's problem. They have built up a company and make a living doing it - make it their problem so you can focus back on your problems.

For large enterprise, you want a sales/sales engineering/ISV ecosystem and off-the street contractors and consultants to do advanced engineering for you. For large enterprise, cost of failure way trumps cost of implementation, and so the capex of the gear and the opex of the support contract are just not a problem. Also, once you start talking serious high availability and high performance, you need custom hardware, and that's where you really just need a company whose job it is to handle this. Unless your IT group has a billion or so laying around to spend building some ASICs, in which case you might be in the wrong business

 

[Nothinman]

I don't want to make a big fuss about terminology. Because that is what we are discussing here, what a term like "reliability" means.



Your comparison suggests that a truck is an unreliable car compared to a Porsche. The Porsche can drive 250 km/hour. When I try to drive my truck at 250 km/hour, it fails. So I can't rely on my truck to drive fast. Therefor my truck has low reliability ???

Car analogies always suck, but this one isn't even appropriate. If I buy a router that says it's designed to pass traffic and it stops doing that under normal usage, then it's not reliable. It's designed to do 1 job, pass traffic, and if it fails at that then it's unreliable. Whether it's FTP, HTTP or BitTorrent traffic doesn't even enter into it. If it failed whenever you downloaded a large file via FTP would you say the same thing? Would you be one of those apologists saying "It works just fine as long as you don't do that." even though "that" is something it should be able to do?

There are many different aspects to decide whether a product is good or bad. Performance. Price. Featureset. Amount of bugs. Reliability. But they mean different things. Reliability means: can I depend on the fact that what it does today, it will do tomorrow as well ? In other words: will it break down ? The example you can up with has nothing to do with reliability as used in computer science. In your example the router has low performance. Or bad design. Or lacks features. But it has nothing to do with the concept of reliability.

Good/bad and reliable/unreliable aren't the same. Something can be considered perfectly good by some people and still be unreliable. Or something could be 100% reliable but still be considered bad by someone because it's ugly or doesn't work exactly how they want. Good and bad are subjective, reliable isn't. Stopping the passing of traffic until a reboot isn't "low performance" it's fucking broken, there's no gray area there, and many SOHO routers do just that.

If English isn't your first language then I apologize, but otherwise I can't see how you could consider a router that utterly fails when handed BitTorrent traffic as "low performance" instead of just a POS like it really is.

For a medium to large enterprise, where things are more complex and downtime matters, you want more features, you want a product with more field experience in similar environment, and you want a TAC you can blame -- er, call for assistance -- when it breaks. A lot of network appliances sold into medium and large enterprises actually run embedded Linux or BSD on them, but that's not YOUR problem to set up and make work, it's the vendor's problem. They have built up a company and make a living doing it - make it their problem so you can focus back on your problems.

Yea, a ton of the stuff Cisco is shipping now is built around Linux. CUCM, Unity, CCX, Nexus Switches, etc. But you never get to actually touch the OS, they give you an extremely limited shell (which sucks, BTW) and the web interface and that's it. Sadly, most of the TAC engineers I've talked to don't have any Linux experience and recommend rebuilds/restores when I've been able to fix the system with a Linux Live CD. But there's no way they could be expected to walk an engineer that's only had IOS or Windows experience to boot a Live CD and fsck their filesystems.

 

[Emulex]

you don't remember the days before cisco was a name when you ran t-1 cards and bgp4 off bsd? sad.