161–170 of 276 posts
Nobody I know makes routers and more importantly WiFi combo AP in the US except for high end corporate stuff - even the US only cable modem stuff from Comcast are Chinese OEM ???. Some more idiocy from the FCC chair.
OpenWrt has a generic x86 PC build that can also be used to turn basically any random PC into a router, complete with an operating system actually designed and developed for that purpose.
And of course probably 1000x the power usage compared to the average off the shelf router that runs off a borderline microcontroller.
> While it may seem appealing, I would highly recommend against installing loads of software right on the router, and instead forward traffic to a device in a DMZ or VLAN. Why not? I use an old gaming PC as a "router" (machine exposed to the WAN), and run dozens of services on it besides the firewall/NAT (iptables). Among others: email, Web server, multiple game servers, and many internal services (DNS, hostapd, load…
E.g. is your pf-based load balancer running its rules before or after the global filtering rules? And if they're running first are they SNATing incoming traffic so the LAN rules allow the traffic through or does it need explicit exceptions for external IPs to traverse to a LAN endpoint?
If you're comfortable with more advanced networking then it's fine to run it all on one box. If you just want to open ports for internal LAN services then that is a very canned and well-supported feature for a gateway firewall.
E.g. see AirSnitch which resulted in large part from mixing too many complex networking rules in single devices.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd be shocked to find out how old and weak the CPU in your current router is. Typically they're on par with low end desktop CPUs from 10-15 years ago.
Except actual routers don't handle the traffic on the CPU, they have dedicated hardware to actually handle the packets. The CPU basically runs the OS, configures the hardware router, and does housekeeping tasks (e.g. ARP or FDB expirations, NAT cleanup, etc). The only packets that ever reach it are "trap to CPU" situations that don't require acceleration as those are rare or expensive to implement in hardware (e.g. b…
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…
Basically any computer is a router if you're brave enough. Windows PCs had (have?) that Internet connection sharing feature for a long time. It was really just a checkbox to enable NAT too. Sometimes I think combining a firewall/router/switch/AP/file server/etc into a device called a "router" really confuses people. Even people who should know better.
Anyone with translate.kagi can find it and translate
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…
Ha, that's very close to my story as well. I had a 166Mhz Pentium and it was all PCI cards and 100mbit by then. That was essentially the start of my career.
It just wouldn't die.
The suspicion was because the electricity going to it cleaner than average, in a datacenter, the normal wear and tear on electronics may have been reduced.
Respect was paid at it's decommissioning to convert it into a vm, knowing it's luck, chances are it would still boot up and keep on running.
> While it may seem appealing, I would highly recommend against installing loads of software right on the router, and instead forward traffic to a device in a DMZ or VLAN. Why not? I use an old gaming PC as a "router" (machine exposed to the WAN), and run dozens of services on it besides the firewall/NAT (iptables). Among others: email, Web server, multiple game servers, and many internal services (DNS, hostapd, load…
I've been very interested in some of Radxa's boards in the ~$30-70 range, like the E52C [0] and the E20C [1], but they don't have many distributors and seem to have stocking issues [2].
[0] https://radxa.com/products/network-computer/e52c/
[1] https://radxa.com/products/network-computer/e20c/
[2] https://shop.allnetchina.cn/products/radxa-e52c?variant=5034...