DIY linux router questions

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by Geofrancis

I agree I just mean for the home server/media center you don't want to go the route of lots if slow cores you will start running into performance problems as soon as one core is running at 100%. That's why I went the route of consolidating my servers into one box.

For security concerns I would never put media and served data on my gateway. It doesn't belong there. There are some kinds of servers you should consolidate and those that you shouldn't. Your gateway is one of those that you shouldn't.

[Geofrancis]

I thought about that but the network layout is exactly the same and the operanting systems are isolated in esxi and can only communicate via the network like they could of it was a standard ddwrt router instead of the x86 version in a vm unless something was not configured right in the routing but that would compromise any network vm's or not.

[corehazard]

You may to check out Zentyal. I used it once for a file server/ domain controller (not in any meaningful way) and it was a piece of cake to set up. It will handle router/firewall duties and can even run a proxy server. Since it is based off of Ubuntu you might be able to install media streaming software on it. It comes with a built in desktop environment and you don't need to use the command line very much.

http://www.zentyal.org/

[Geofrancis]

that looks pretty cool im going to give it a go. any idea if it works with xbox 360's?

[corehazard]

If you want both a media server and gateway I'd recommend using VMware ESXi, one VM for the gateway the other one running FreeNAS. As for Zentyal running a media server, it doesn't have one on its website.

Another possible solution maybe GeeXboX, which supports Ubuntu and it might run on Zentyal.

http://ushare.geexbox.org/

[Geofrancis]

I had the problem of trying to get everythig on one os route and ran into problems that's why I use esxi

[Wrigleyvillain]

Originally Posted by corehazard

You may to check out Zentyal. I used it once for a file server/ domain controller (not in any meaningful way) and it was a piece of cake to set up. It will handle router/firewall duties and can even run a proxy server. Since it is based off of Ubuntu you might be able to install media streaming software on it. It comes with a built in desktop environment and you don't need to use the command line very much.

http://www.zentyal.org/

Interesting, thanks.

[Geofrancis]

i bought this to use as a firewall
http://www.boser.com.tw/detail_produ...?Model=HS-2613

1ghz VIA eden should be enough for a firewall and vpn and i can run it from 12v dc without using a pico psu not bad for £20!

im going to put Zentyal on it and run it as a dedicated router os but if that is too slow i will just put DDWRT X86 onto it. i like the idea of putting the motherboard onto the back of a 7" lcd monitor so i can monitor the network in realtime.

[james888]

Originally Posted by Geofrancis

i bought this to use as a firewall
http://www.boser.com.tw/detail_produ...?Model=HS-2613

1ghz VIA eden should be enough for a firewall and vpn and i can run it from 12v dc without using a pico psu not bad for £20!

im going to put Zentyal on it and run it as a dedicated router os but if that is too slow i will just put DDWRT X86 onto it. i like the idea of putting the motherboard onto the back of a 7" lcd monitor so i can monitor the network in realtime.

So you would take that and maybe connect it to a Ethernet switch or wireless router for more connections?

[Geofrancis]

Originally Posted by james888

So you would take that and maybe connect it to a Ethernet switch or wireless router for more connections?

Yes I have a gigabit switch and I would just put my netgear dual band router into ap mode and plug it in for wireless access for now at least until I can figure out how to get a pair of USB wifi adapters to work as access points.

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by Geofrancis

Yes I have a gigabit switch and I would just put my netgear dual band router into ap mode and plug it in for wireless access for now at least until I can figure out how to get a pair of USB wifi adapters to work as access points.

This is the affordable option and is what most people and small businesses do. Just make sure if you're using a wireless AP, make sure to set the router to bridge/ap mode before hand. You will also want to either...

A: Set a static IP address on the AP so you have a usable address to make changes to the AP.
B: Set a static IP in the DHCP config on your server so the AP will always get the same IP address.

You might also want to give Webmin a try if you're not confident managing a linux gateway from the CLI. It's gotten a lot better over the years.

I actually just decided to build a gateway for my network the other day. I sold my 940 + AM2+ board and managed to find someone who was selling a non-unlockable 960t which he was unhappy with and gave to me for a killer deal, so now it's my gateway.

Nothing like a stable connection.

I'm supposed to be getting 12 down and 2 up. This is what they're giving me, bandwidth slightly went up when I switched to the new gateway but it's really the ping jitter that practically disappeared. The biggest thing you're going to notice from running a gateway is running a local DNS server. That way requests get cached so it doesn't have to do more than hop to your gateway to get a response (versus google, your ISP, or a free open DNS service.) Just make sure to find out which DNS servers are fastest and put them in order from fastest to slowest when you setup forwarding servers.

[Geofrancis]

Originally Posted by Aquinus

This is the affordable option and is what most people and small businesses do. Just make sure if you're using a wireless AP, make sure to set the router to bridge/ap mode before hand. You will also want to either...

A: Set a static IP address on the AP so you have a usable address to make changes to the AP.
B: Set a static IP in the DHCP config on your server so the AP will always get the same IP address.

You might also want to give Webmin a try if you're not confident managing a linux gateway from the CLI. It's gotten a lot better over the years.

I would just disable everything on he wireless router dhcp upnp and set the ip to a static one so the computer router would manage everything.

I have done it before with ddwrt in esxi and it worked fine I just don't want the net to go down everytime i reboot the server so that's why I'm going with an independent dedicated router.

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by Geofrancis

I have done it before with ddwrt in esxi and it worked fine I just don't want the net to go down everytime i reboot the server so that's why I'm going with an independent dedicated router.

I went this route so I had more control over the firewall (man do I love iptables... usually...) and so I could use something that could respond quickly. DNS was a pretty big factor because I was getting tired of remember IP addresses and I didn't want to put my internal DNS externally.

So now I have a 3ghz quad-core running my network with my E4200 just serving up some 1Gbps ports and the wi-fi.

Originally Posted by Geofrancis

I would just disable everything on he wireless router dhcp upnp and set the ip to a static one so the computer router would manage everything.

If he as an AP or Bridge mode, that will all automatically disable routing and dhcp.

[james888]

Originally Posted by Aquinus

I went this route so I had more control over the firewall (man do I love iptables... usually...) and so I could use something that could respond quickly. DNS was a pretty big factor because I was getting tired of remember IP addresses and I didn't want to put my internal DNS externally.

So now I have a 3ghz quad-core running my network with my E4200 just serving up some 1Gbps ports and the wi-fi.



If he as an AP or Bridge mode, that will all automatically disable routing and dhcp.

3ghz quad core. Is that not a lot of overkill. Does it actually provide anything noticeably better than say his 1ghz via. Cpu to cpu.

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by james888

3ghz quad core. Is that not a lot of overkill. Does it actually provide anything noticeably better than say his 1ghz via. Cpu to cpu.

I doubt it. We're talking about the CPU responding to something that takes very little CPU to begin with. I can't believe it would result in any more than half a millisecond to one millisecond tops if the network isn't loaded. It's not significant. I am planning on eventually under-volting and underclocking it since it's idling most of the time anyways. I'm just using this because it's the best hardware I have for a gateway. (Mobo has dual-lan and a lot of PCI-E.)

[james888]

My original question has been answered. Thanks guys. If I make one of these it will be all about the learning experience. I just think it would be fun.

Originally Posted by Geofrancis

pair of USB wifi adapters to work as access points

Wouldn't the bandwidth of usb2.0 bottle neck the network speed? Edit: I guess not. For example I have 25mbit down which is about 1 megabyte down which usb2.0 is still faster than.

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by james888

Wouldn't the bandwidth of usb2.0 bottle neck the network speed? Edit: I guess not. For example I have 25mbit down which is about 1 megabyte down which usb2.0 is still faster than.

Assuming you have a good USB controller, even 3x3 MIMO on 5Ghz at full speed shouldn't bottleneck it. 300Mbps < 420Mbps. You might get a slowdown if you have one of those bigger 450Mbit adapters but that is only if you have a full signal at full speed. A very rare case. Keep in mind that if you put more than one high-bandwidth device into a USB port, internally they might be on the same hub so bandwidth would be shared. USB and PCI tend to be okay for wireless, but if USB 3.0 or PCI-E is an option, go for it. Personally I would go for the PCI-E option if you can (if you have the port, room, and money to get the card(s).)

Originally Posted by james888

My original question has been answered. Thanks guys. If I make one of these it will be all about the learning experience. I just think it would be fun.

Glad to be of service. Let us know if you decide to, we'll be more than happy to try and answer any questions you may have.

[Exceededgoku]

I've actually just built a FreeBSD based router using pfsense as the main OS.

My setup consists of:

Intel Pentium G860 Dual Core 3Ghz
Intel B75 chipset with Atheros network (unsupported with latest version)
8GB RAM
250GB HDD
4 x Dual gigabit realtek network cards
1 x single gigabit intel network card.

I had to compile some drivers using a standalone copy of FreeBSD 8.1 but in the end works an absolute treat.

I haven't used any of the media functions but obviously I have the capacity should the need arise, my internet's pretty crappy and I'm also awaiting some extra lines from BT to use for bonding.

It's essentially a 9 port router/hub with an extremely fast CPU.

Most load I've seen in terms of load is around 1%, I'm hoping that when the technology comes to my area I can utilise 100MBps down and up on each port, and bond roughly half the available ports.

Setup cost around £400 in total, not much more than an enterprise class router so not even that expensive really...

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by Exceededgoku

4 x Dual gigabit realtek network cards
1 x single gigabit intel network card.

All on PCI-E? That's a lot of switching power if you have a lot of internet network traffic. This setup is great if two machines are communicating with each other, saturating their connections a lot when you don't want that to impact the rest of the network. In the long term I'm planning on getting a dual band wi-fi card for mine as well as a 4-port Intel gigabit NIC so I can stop broadcasting wi-fi off the E4200 and turn it into a wireless network bridge instead. For now, just the gateway is fine. I really wanted it for response time not for bandwidth. My internal network traffic is usually pretty low at the moment, so even wi-fi is fine.

Also that earlier speedtest and pingtest were on a wireless connection.

[Geofrancis]

at the moment the wndr3300 netgear router i use works fine most of the timeand can handle my 80/8mb connection but when more than 1 person starts running bit torrent the router just fails and the wifi tops out at 30mbit on the 5ghz N and 15mbit on the 54G so i am looking to replace its router and wireless functions with something a bit faster.

the little industrial boarrd i bought to use as a router has pc104+ which as far as i know is just a stackable version of pci so i might be able to get more ethernet ports or wireless via pci its just hard to find the parts as its an industrial spec no consumer hardware uses it.

[Exceededgoku]

Originally Posted by Aquinus

All on PCI-E? That's a lot of switching power if you have a lot of internet network traffic. This setup is great if two machines are communicating with each other, saturating their connections a lot when you don't want that to impact the rest of the network. In the long term I'm planning on getting a dual band wi-fi card for mine as well as a 4-port Intel gigabit NIC so I can stop broadcasting wi-fi off the E4200 and turn it into a wireless network bridge instead. For now, just the gateway is fine. I really wanted it for response time not for bandwidth. My internal network traffic is usually pretty low at the moment, so even wi-fi is fine.

Also that earlier speedtest and pingtest were on a wireless connection.

All on PCI-E indeed!

It's an insane amount of power for my requirements, but my thinking is I'm only going to spend more and more on routers over the years in any case and the idea of having something like this that is easily upgradeable is a no-brainer.

I'm considering using it as a wireless router as well but need to find some drivers for the onboard network card beforehand.

I don't think I should have any issues with PCIE causing bandwidth limitations.

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by Exceededgoku

I don't think I should have any issues with PCIE causing bandwidth limitations.

No, not at all. The bus will be the last thing you have to worry about. The ethernet cable and card would most likely become overburdened before PCI-E does.

[Geofrancis]

i got Zentyal installed on my 3.5" via board not had a chance to play with it yet.





im just running from a battery until i get another power supply lol

[Geofrancis]

ddwrt running on it its booting from an 8gb Seagate CF microdrive

[james888]

Why not run in off a usb drive? I assume it is because you are saving them for something else.