custom router "build your own"Posted:
Mon Sep 01, 2008 12:11 am
Ok people, we all know how over time a standard router will burn out or just go flaky on you. I've been building my own for years now and figured what the hell ill share it with you. All you need is an old machine, nothing to special I run a slot pIII 500 with 256 megs of ram with a old maxtor 6 gig hd. Next you will need two ethernet cards, realteks and 3coms work the best and a hub or switch. The best router software I've found that is easy enough for noobs to setup yet has all the features of a high end cisco router is smoothwall found here http://www.smoothwall.org/. Download smoothwall make sure to get the one you need such as the standard 32 bit version or 64, but 64 bit is overkill as I won't allocate that type of machine to just run as a router. Burn the image to disk and boot your old machine up using the smoothwall disk. Once booted smoothwall will configure the hd for use with smoothwall and once done it will run a setup for you to configure the net cards for your network and isp. Now the net card setup is a bit techy, but I think most can handle it. The benefits of a custom router in this type of setup is even a small machine like my 500 with 256 megs or ram is way overkill compared to a simple router or even a high end router when compared hardware to hardware plus not to mention the smoothwall comes with many nice features such as qos packet shaping, ip whois lookup and tracerout, all the nice features you would find on a high end commercial router. Check it out for yourselves and see what ya think!
I've down it before but not with that software I used the internet sharing built in Xp which is junk compared to that , but nice to know iuf I need it. Have you done it with a wireless card? If so how was it's performance?
Also Darth was that a Abit Be6 or Be6 II board it looks familar?
I remember that chipset lol , it was a solid performer back in the day. I used to run a sloket on my be6 ll board and overclocked the shit out of a Celeron 333. I think I still have that board some where's.
I've been running IPCOP for years on various old hardware, the only problem I've had was my 1 gig compact flash card (hard drive) would fill up to the rim with log files and IPcop would act all slow and non responsive. This would happen after about a year of use, especially with Snort intrusion detection logs filling up quickly.
Right now I believe I'm running an old AMD system, 1.3 GHz, two gigs Corsair ram, nForce 1 board and a classic 3COM 3c509 card, 2 gig compact flash to IDE converter. Oldest hardware goes to it, even though its overkill, gotta dump surplus stuff. This is an upgrade from a 1GHz P3 with 512 megs SD ram.
I've had many problems when torrenting like crazy with hundreds of unique IP's hammering your connection, usually a shitty Dlink would reset from overload
however, I would like to get my hands on a Mini-ITX board, with dual nics, but not willing to spend nearly $300 on one, even off eBay. A full desktop PC as a router has one drawback, takes up space and possibly a tad power power usage.
Check out the latest post for the MSI board, VGA, DVI, HDMI output, Dual LANS, WOW!!! Most full size ATX boards don't even come with that much. A bit too much for a router, but this should drive the prices of older models down a notch.
I know about itx, but If i'm gonna use something for a router or phone server I personally will want something that if a hd fails or a nic fails I can easily replace it without having to order something else, not to mention the price factor!
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