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How to turn anything into a router

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Re: How to turn anything into a router

#121

Post by abustamam »

smashed wrote: post #30

Lots of "just use X" comments but the article is about showing the bare minimum/how easy the core part of routing actually is. Also, if you have ever used docker or virtual machines with NAT routing (often the default), you've done exactly the same things. If you have ever enabled the wifi hotspot on an android phone also, you've done pretty much what the article describes on your phone. All of these use the same Lin…

Yeah I find it more interesting to see how it's built from scratch, then I can decide if it's worth doing myself or just using X. I think this is a good software principle in general.

Re: How to turn anything into a router

#122

Post by leptons »

proxysna wrote: post #43

Pleasant thing about routers that is is so simple to build one after learning basics of networking and pretty much any OS or distro can act as one. There are obvious choices like OPN\PFSENSE, OpenWRT, DD-WRT, FreshTomato, but literally any PC with a single Ethernet port can act as one. My favorite setup was a laptop running Ubuntu and the whole router setup was in a single netplan file + dnsmasq for DHCP. Edit: And o…

Been using DD-WRT for years. Current setup is a $50 Dell Optiplex i5 from ebay running x86 DD-WRT. I put an intel 4x 1Gbit NIC in it, and it's been an excellent router for years.

Re: How to turn anything into a router

#123

Post by bityard »

pdntspa wrote: post #109

Can anyone recommend a good, energy-efficient, inexpensive dual-NIC SBC or miniPC? Last time I looked into this there were not many good options.

It's hard to recommend one thing because there are so many options and they all have different trade-offs in terms of initial cost, ease-of-use, reliability, performance, etc.

A year or two back, I was able to get a brand-new fanless Intel N150 with 4x2.5G ports with 16 GB memory for about $150 from AliExpress. I run Proxmox on it, with OpnSense and a couple other things in virtual machines. These days, due to tariffs and the memory shortage, that is more like $440 now, unfortunately. I am kicking myself for not buying two, not so much because of the price increase, but because it would have come in handy multiple times to have a second one on-hand for random experiments.

Given that CPU performance does _not_ tend to be critical for firewall/NAS use cases, if I had to replace it tomorrow, I would go onto eBay and get the highest-spec'd used Dell or HP mini workstation I could find for $120 and plug in a USB3 1gig ethernet dongle for the WAN side.

Re: How to turn anything into a router

#124

Post by TacticalCoder »

bluedino wrote: post #47

This really takes me back. My first actual 'use' for Linux was making routers out of leftover computers. The perfect machine back then was a 100MHz Pentium, in a slimline desktop case. At the time, the Pentium III was the current desktop chip, so you'd have a pile of early Pentium-class machines to use. And even a 10mb ISA network card (3Com if possible) would have plenty of power for the internet connections of the…

> The perfect machine back then was a 100MHz Pentium, in a slimline desktop case. At the time, the Pentium III was the current desktop chip, so you'd have a pile of early Pentium-class machines to use. And even a 10mb ISA network card (3Com if possible) would have plenty of power for the internet connections of the day.

I was doing the same. Router and firewall on old Pentium CPUs. I don't have these machines anymore but I still have HDDs from back then with post-it notes on them saying stuff like: "Linux firewall / HDD 120 GB". For whatever reason my HDDs adapter that can read just about everything doesn't have the correct pin out for those HDDs. Would be a blast if they were to still boot: at some point I'll just buy a compatible adapter and see what I can find on those HDDs. I was very likely also saving some backups there.

But really my best memory was years (I think) before 120 GB HDDs became an affordable thing, in the super early Slackware days, on a dial-up connection: I had a 486 desktop computer and I'd share the Internet connection to a very old laptop (!) using... PLIP. A printer cable and the Parallel Line Internet Protocol. Amazing hack: my brother and I could then both use Netscape at the same time and to us this felt like a glimpse into the future.

Re: How to turn anything into a router

#125

Post by Fwirt »

You actually don't even need two interfaces on the box if you have a managed switch. It's not too difficult to configure your only interface as an 802.11q trunk port, and then you can use the managed switch as a sort of "interface expander". This is referred to as a "router on a stick" configuration, and it's how my home network is configured. Plus, if it's a PoE managed switch, you can install some cheap enterprise surplus Aruba IAPs around the house for Wi-Fi which is a lot higher quality than a consumer router or a mesh setup.

My home router was an old Thinkpad for a while, but then I switched over to a slightly newer Dell Optiplex that my work was throwing out. The plus side of that is that the i7 is total overkill for routing so I can also have my "router" run some VMs for network services and cut down on the number of boxen in my homelab rack.

Alpine is a great distro for this.

Re: How to turn anything into a router

#126

Post by tonymet »

Great writeup. One advantage true routers have e.g. Edgerouter or Mikrotik are dedicated hardware for IP & TCP header processing. Some can offload AES for VPN encryption. This leads to cooler temps, lower power utilization & longer life.

I encourage everyone to run a hardware router. A cheap dedicated wired router can be had for $50. Run PfSense or the vendor firmware . It’s very rewarding. Also a long term investment since routers tend to last for many years while wifi standards are revised every year or so .

Re: How to turn anything into a router

#127

Post by 0xCMP »

radlad wrote: post #85
lstodd wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not much different. FreeBSD's pf is a port of OpenBSD's pf, and nftables are heavily influenced by them. At this point I rather doubt the sanity of people still sticking to iptables tbh. So there is approximately one concept of "packet filter done right". UI madness is on UI authors.

The primary reason I stick to iptables instead of nft is that I already learned iptables decades ago, and some software I interact with still defaults to iptables and/or does not have full support for nft. Why do you doubt the sanity of people sticking to iptables? What makes nft compelling?

My main reason is that nft applies configs atomically. It also has very good tracing/debugging features for figuring out how and why things aren't working as expected.

That said, I think many distros are shipping `iptables` as the wrapper/compatibility layer over nft now anyways.

Re: How to turn anything into a router

#128

Post by supertrope »

hmaxwell wrote: post #73

I'm curious about the policy rationale behind banning router imports. If a government were considering legislation like that, what would the primary concern usually be? Given that so much internet traffic is now protected by TLS/SSL and other encryption, why would it still matter if citizens were using routers that might be backdoored? Is the concern mainly things like botnets and DDoS activity, weak default credenti…

The FCC Chairman is sucking up to the President.

If this were really about computer security they would follow California’s example of requiring unique passwords. Maybe make manufacturers liable for not patching known remote exploitable security vulnerabilities. It doesn’t matter if the source of a DDoS is a Huawei box or a Netgear box.

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