WatsonN Posted November 27, 2011 Share Posted November 27, 2011 I was wanting to build a high performance router and was wanting to see if anyone had recommendations on hardware and software to use. I know Darren used smoothwall and and a mini-itx board in 718, but I was wanting to see what other options there are. I was planning on using it for routing, wireless and wired, and a file server. Are there better than other OSes and hardware combinations. I'm thinking having a 5GHz N and a separate 2.4GHz mixed. Have you built your own, did you run into any issues? Anything on the subject would be nice. Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meydrew Posted December 15, 2011 Share Posted December 15, 2011 They actually plugged this on the show I don't remember what episode but Untangle is nice. It only has a few free features but the interface is rather nice and easy to work with. http://www.untangle.com/Lite-Package That or you could try clear OS. I haven't had the time to play with it in-depth but it looks like it has the versatility that you are looking for. http://www.clearfoundation.com/Software/overview.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
telot Posted December 15, 2011 Share Posted December 15, 2011 Anything with a cpu thats pentium4 or newer and a gig+ of ram will make a very overpowered awesome router/fileserver. I use a 5 year old athlon dual core with 2gb ram to run Untangled and it works great. Kind of a kilowatt/hour drain, but the feature set and customizability is amazing. DIY wireless routers are tricky - getting the right chipset can be a pain, as even the same model number by the same manufacturer can have different chipsets thrown in there at the drop of a hat it seems. Unless you can confirm the chipset for a wifi card you're looking to buy (or built in adapter on your mobo) before purchase, I'd go with something USB external that runs linux that you know plays nice (see alfa AP51 for a great b/g option that can also double as a wifi pineapple). I'd imagine you'd have to bridge your lan nic (NOT wan) to your wireless nic (e.g. wlan0 in master mode) with iptables. I've never tried to incorporate wireless into my DIY router - anyone whose done this care to chime in? telot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infiltrator Posted December 15, 2011 Share Posted December 15, 2011 Untangle is a nice firewall software, but it can be a bit of a resource hog sometimes. I would suggest PfSense, if you could use it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Sorrow Posted December 26, 2011 Share Posted December 26, 2011 *pfSense fan here* Its simple and easy to use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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