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Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

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Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#11

Post by noonespecial »

jzawodn wrote: post #8
citricsquid wrote: post #6

Maybe this is a reasonable place to ask for some advice: I have 2 broadband connections, one via my phone line (ADSL) (76/17) and one cable (50/4) does anyone have any experience with using 1 piece of hardware to manage them both, possibly load balancing (not important, but would be cool)? I currently have 1 modem and 2 routers... it's not a very power efficient set up, it's also a bad experience because they're all…

I do exactly this using a Soekris box running pfSense. It's a godsend. Seriously. Perhaps I should blog about the setup as some point.

I've been doing this for years as well. I use PCengines ALIX boards to build new ones for friends and family now as they seem to have the same specs for half the price.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#12

Post by cygwin98 »

jzawodn wrote: post #8
citricsquid wrote: post #6

Maybe this is a reasonable place to ask for some advice: I have 2 broadband connections, one via my phone line (ADSL) (76/17) and one cable (50/4) does anyone have any experience with using 1 piece of hardware to manage them both, possibly load balancing (not important, but would be cool)? I currently have 1 modem and 2 routers... it's not a very power efficient set up, it's also a bad experience because they're all…

I do exactly this using a Soekris box running pfSense. It's a godsend. Seriously. Perhaps I should blog about the setup as some point.

pfSense is way to go. Though I'm not sure if Soekris has sufficient juice to handle the load in his case.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#13

Post by [deleted] »

citricsquid wrote: post #6

Maybe this is a reasonable place to ask for some advice: I have 2 broadband connections, one via my phone line (ADSL) (76/17) and one cable (50/4) does anyone have any experience with using 1 piece of hardware to manage them both, possibly load balancing (not important, but would be cool)? I currently have 1 modem and 2 routers... it's not a very power efficient set up, it's also a bad experience because they're all…

[deleted]

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#14

Post by jzawodn »

cygwin98 wrote: post #12
jzawodn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do exactly this using a Soekris box running pfSense. It's a godsend. Seriously. Perhaps I should blog about the setup as some point.

pfSense is way to go. Though I'm not sure if Soekris has sufficient juice to handle the load in his case.

True. My fattest pipe is a mere 5Mbit at this point (I live out in the boonies).

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#15

Post by Judson »

The base Tomato firmware hasn't been updated in quite some time, but there are many forks of the firmware that add some really powerful features[1]. I've run vanilla tomato for years, but some of the forks are looking tempting.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato_(firmware)#Feature_compa...

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#16

Post by quesera »

citricsquid wrote: post #6

Maybe this is a reasonable place to ask for some advice: I have 2 broadband connections, one via my phone line (ADSL) (76/17) and one cable (50/4) does anyone have any experience with using 1 piece of hardware to manage them both, possibly load balancing (not important, but would be cool)? I currently have 1 modem and 2 routers... it's not a very power efficient set up, it's also a bad experience because they're all…

I've done this with Soekris and Cisco. The tricky part is getting a router that will take a cable modem module (not sure if either Soekris or Cisco will), plus a DSL terminator (both Soekris and Cisco will). These are not consumer tech, and they're not cheap.

Then you have to get or guess the configs for both WAN links, possibly with unhelpful residential support techs.

Cisco 2600 class routers are power hungry and loud too, so no win there. Soekris is smaller and more efficient, and runs BSD, so it's awesome in other ways...but it is a pain in the neck to set up. Several hours of prep plus work for your first time.

But if you are most concerned about DNS, I can think of two quick options: put your own router (ideally running Tomato or DD-WRT) behind your existing mess and serve DHCP from there to your network(s), or take DHCP from your provider, but hardcode the DNS settings on each host.

Edit: and Aside: less than a minute after posting this, I decided to check google to see if Soekris supported cable modem cards, and my post (this comment) came up on the first page of results. I had no idea google could turn crawls into results that quickly.

But it appears that Soekris does not support cable modem cards, from a cursory investigation.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#17

Post by ShabbyDoo »

I posted this "Ask HN" awhile back about my desire to pay for a router-as-a-service:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1160585

What surprised me was the number of responses along the lines of "you don't need this -- just install DD-WRT, OpenWRT, whatever and configure the foo,bar, and baz features as such." I'm likely in the 99th percentile of the US population in my ability to do such a thing, and I still have to spend a bunch of time Googling. Worse yet, I don't have the certainty at the end that I've done it right.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#19

Post by ad_hominem »

Really? I didn't expect to find a "consumer device roundup" article (along with sidebar ads and referral tags for the products being reviewed) to rate so highly on HN, even if the reviewer is Jeff Atwood. I doubt that flashing custom firmware on a router or QoS settings are a new concept to anyone on here.

All I'm gaining by reading the article is some knowledge on some consumer electronics that will probably no longer be valid in a couple weeks, which IMO is not HN-material. These types of articles are best served by Google results when I'm actually looking for a new router, not on my HN feed.

What's next, "how to build a computer?"

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#20

Post by alter8 »

btgeekboy wrote: post #7

No mention of Mikrotik? I picked up a RB750GL last week, and so far, it's everything DD-WRT/Tomato/etc wish they could be. It works as a basic plug-and-play router, but it's incredibly flexible beyond that. Check out http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:RouterOS_features if you're interested. You can download the OS and run it in a VM if you want to give it a try before purchasing.

> No mention of Mikrotik?

FTA: (...) a combination of commodity hardware and open-source firmware.

It's OK that you suggest RouterOS, I'm just saying OP is not supposed to mention it.

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