How to turn anything into a router • Hacker News Board

Re: How to turn anything into a router

#271

Post by ssl-3 » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 7:31 PM UTC

seniorThrowaway wrote: post #262

ssl-3 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys with your dedicated hardware. :) I did routing duties for my LAN with my primary desktop for about a decade, variously with Linux, OS/2 (anyone remember InJoy?), and FreeBSD -- starting with 486 hardware. Most of that decade was with dial-up. The first iteration involved keying in ipfwadm commands from, IIRC, Matt Welsh's very fine Running Linux book. WAN speeds were low; doing routing with my desktop box wa…

>Part of the roadmap involved divorcing the routing from the wifi completely This is the move. Let's you upgrade the different parts of the network separately. I have 3 components, an N150 router/fw/DNS/VPN box with 2.5GB NICs running OPNSense. A cheap but surprisingly good 2.5GB managed switch, and a cheap wifi 6 VLAN tag capable wifi access point.

Yes, it definitely is the right way to do stuff. It's not arduous and it represents a highly functional and sustainable level of separation.

It wasn't always practical (dedicated, plain PoE access points of unobtrusive shapes were once rather expensive), but these days it's completely approachable and usable.

If I may ask: Why a 2.5GB switch instead of, say, 10GB? I know 10GB over copper is a mess due to the heat generation, but my own perfect vision of an upgrade involves using optics instead.

Re: How to turn anything into a router

#272

Post by krautburglar » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 9:02 PM UTC

Pxtl wrote: post #270

krautburglar wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything outside of power equipment -- like HVAC, refrigerator, laundry dryer, etc -- is a rounding error on most power bills.

Right but so's the price of a Raspberry Pi. 10W running 24/7 means about 7.3 kWh/month. In my area the average kW/h costs about $0.13 CAD So a good rule of thumb is that every 10W 24/7 is about $1CAD/mo. So assuming 30W for a laptop and 6W for a pi4, that means a difference of $29/yr. Which isn't a lot but isn't a rounding error either.

Laptop/desktop wattage varies with processor and peripheral load. Unless you are pushing 10gbit and leaving the screen on 24x7, even an old box will be mostly in an idle state, with actual draw well below 30W.

Even if that were not the case, paying an extra $2.50 / mo to not do ghetto fabulous bs with rpi and vlans seems like money well spent to me.

Re: How to turn anything into a router

#273

Post by heresie-dabord » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 1:00 AM UTC

chungy wrote: post #65

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.

Information for the OpenWrt x86 build

https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/installation/openwrt_x86

Re: How to turn anything into a router

#274

Post by a96 » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 9:34 PM UTC

simoncion wrote: post #246

a96 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And no (mention of) ECC.

On printed page five of the brochure [0] it mentions Size of RAM 32 GB ECC RAM type DDR4 On the one hand, it'd be nice if that was mentioned everywhere that the RAM size was mentioned. On the other hand, perhaps ECC RAM is effectively mandatory for Enterprise equipment, so mentioning it is redundant? IDK, I don't often purchase that sort of stuff. [0] https://cdn.mikrotik.com/web-assets/product_files/RDS2216-2X... >

It's because it's mandatory that it should be front and center on any list of specs. But better late than never, I guess. Thanks for digging it up.

Re: How to turn anything into a router

#275

Post by timkofu » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 12:00 PM UTC

I used to use VyOS for this.

Re: How to turn anything into a router

#276

Post by simoncion » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 3:07 PM UTC

a96 wrote: post #274

simoncion wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On printed page five of the brochure [0] it mentions Size of RAM 32 GB ECC RAM type DDR4 On the one hand, it'd be nice if that was mentioned everywhere that the RAM size was mentioned. On the other hand, perhaps ECC RAM is effectively mandatory for Enterprise equipment, so mentioning it is redundant? IDK, I don't often purchase that sort of stuff. [0] https://cdn.mikrotik.com/web-assets/product_files/RDS2216-2X... >

It's because it's mandatory that it should be front and center on any list of specs. But better late than never, I guess. Thanks for digging it up.

> It's because it's mandatory that it should be front and center on any list of specs.

Eh... I could go either way on that. Spec sheets and marketing copy for these things don't include the phrase "Runs on electricity!" because that property is effectively mandatory. If ECC is effectively mandatory for enterprise-grade networking gear, I can totally see not mentioning it.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure it's -infuriatingly- not at all mandatory for SOHO/"prosumer" gear, so it's important to mention for things you're selling in those markets.