DIY Linux Gateway

[Geofrancis]

For pure routing alone your right an atom would be plenty but who wants to build a Linux router just for that?

[Wrigleyvillain]

Fair enough.

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by Geofrancis

For pure routing alone your right an atom would be plenty but who wants to build a Linux router just for that?

An Atom would handle an iptables firewall, DNS, DHCP, and OpenVPN just fine as well. The point is that basic network services like these don't use a ton of resources unless you have a ton of users a a crap ton of bandwidth. You should notice this with your VIA and this Atom is considerably faster than that as well.

[ste2425]

I don't follow allot of what is being talked about here, i do however like the pictures

So on that note more pictures please!!

[Geofrancis]

i am waiting for parts at the moment but some have arrived like my 3 colour leds and 5ghz antennas




i need the rp-sma pigtails to arrive before i can mount the antennas and chop down the pcb.

[Geofrancis]

still to wire on the front panel

via board :
12V power switch
power button
reset button
power and HDD LEDs wired into a RGB LED blue for power, red for HDD
LAN 1 connection and transmit leds wired to a RGB led so it is blue for connected and blinks red when transmitting
LAN 2 connection and transmit leds

Netgear Router:
De solder power socket and replace with wire to main power switch
Wire a RGB LED to the 10 and 100 mbit LEDs for the WAN and 4 LAN ports
Wire RGB LED to power light
de solder reset button and relocate to front panel

i am going to use an ide extension cable cut in half and plugged into its self as a front panel connector so i can disconnect the boards from the case if i have to

[Aquinus]

I saw this on NewEgg. I'm debating getting it for a gateway. The price is right.

GIGABYTE GA-C847N-D Motherboard/CPU/VGA Combo Mot...

[Wrigleyvillain]

Yeah... I was looking at this Asus for the same; not dual nic tho (extra bonus if the ones on the Gigabyte are Intel...but probably not). Passively cooled and has six SATA ports so it's fairly popular as a NAS, however. Also got a PCI-e slot so can toss in a nice RAID card.

ASUS C60M1-I Motherboard/CPU Combo Motherboard/CP...

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by Wrigleyvillain

Yeah... I was looking at this Asus for the same; not dual nic tho (extra bonus if the ones on the Gigabyte are Intel...but probably not). Passively cooled and has six SATA ports so it's fairly popular as a NAS, however. Also got a PCI-e slot so can toss in a nice RAID card.

ASUS C60M1-I Motherboard/CPU Combo Motherboard/CP...

It's not good for a gateway unless you're planning on using that slot for ethernet. PCI is at least fast enough to drive some wi-fi.

There is this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/200687415150?hlp=false

It costs almost twice as much but it has PCI plus two PCI-E mini slots. So you could run dual lan, have wireless and use a PCI-E SSD for boot.

Also don't torture these machines with a RAID card. 1.1Ghz dual-core isn't a lot of power. In some cases the Atom is even faster.

[Geofrancis]

Originally Posted by Aquinus

It's not good for a gateway unless you're planning on using that slot for ethernet. PCI is at least fast enough to drive some wi-fi.

There is this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/200687415150?hlp=false

It costs almost twice as much but it has PCI plus two PCI-E mini slots. So you could run dual lan, have wireless and use a PCI-E SSD for boot.

Also don't torture these machines with a RAID card. 1.1Ghz dual-core isn't a lot of power. In some cases the Atom is even faster.

i agree the new amd chips need a high clock speed to be useful for much of anything i have used a laptop with a 1Ghz dual core apu and it was too slow.

hp make some interesting boards if you can live with a restricted bios and the need to use a power supply adapter.

search ebay for:

Asus MOCA-AR
socket 479 2 x ddr2 sodimm
pcie 16x
its compatible with socket 479 core duo and core 2 duo and will run with up to 3gb of ram.
not compatible with pci-e 2.0 ati graphics cards.
you will need to custom build a heatsink. i used a zalman north bridge cooler modified my bending the clips to fit.

Foxconn Irvine-GL6E
socket 775 2x ddr2
pcie 16x + pcie 1x
nvidia chipset.

Asus M2NC51-AR
socket am2 2x ddr2
pcie 16x + pci


or a normal foxconn board
Foxconn G31S
socket 775 1x ddr2
pcie16x pcie1x
2gb ram and 65w cpu max

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by Geofrancis

i agree the new amd chips need a high clock speed to be useful for much of anything i have used a laptop with a 1Ghz dual core apu and it was too slow.

It would be doing very different tasks than a laptop would though so it most likely would be enough. If it's only going to be a gateway, size and price is what is important. Any modern x86 processor is going to handle being a gateway just fine. It's when you want it to do other things such as acting as a NAS or hosting something off of it where performance becomes a concern, but at that point you're better off having the resources of a full ATX board.

The thing is for 80 dollars, the Celeron sips power and could easily just use an eSATA RAID enclosure and you'll be cooking with gas. The problem with that is the cost of the eSATA raid enclosure so I'm in this perpetual state of trying to figure out what is better for my purposes, weather that is optimizing for cost, size, power consumption, and performance.

[Wrigleyvillain]

Yeah...for the record though you could convert one of the internal to eSATA; port multiplier does work according to some guy's post somewhere. Kind of moot though due to all the other points made primarily re. CPU speed and such. Bottlenecking has definitely been noted by some trying to use it as a NAS.

Though hasn't there just been a refresh of this low power platform by AMD (such as powering that Zotac ZBOX just reviewed here--or is that just a higher end offering of the same chipset as the Asus I linked to)?

[Geofrancis]

another cheap one i found £19
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mini-ITX-I...item43b6eea215

[Wrigleyvillain]

Damn...the one avail in the States linked by Aquinis above is like 250 pounds.

[Geofrancis]

There's lots of cheap itx boards on eBay. Finding one with dual LAN is the hard part.

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by Wrigleyvillain

Damn...the one avail in the States linked by Aquinis above is like 250 pounds.

That Celeron 847 on the gigabyte board is still on newegg for 80 USD.
GIGABYTE GA-C847N-D Motherboard/CPU/VGA Combo Mot...

Just keep in mind that it's only a bit faster than the Atom 330. An Atom 525 with dual lan would probably be more power considering it's also a dual core, clocked higher, and has hyper-threading. The only thing the Celeron has that the Atom doesn't is a dual-channel memory controller, which really doesn't do the celeron any good.

[Geofrancis]

Originally Posted by Aquinus

That Celeron 847 on the gigabyte board is still on newegg for 80 USD.
GIGABYTE GA-C847N-D Motherboard/CPU/VGA Combo Mot...

Just keep in mind that it's only a bit faster than the Atom 330. An Atom 525 with dual lan would probably be more power considering it's also a dual core, clocked higher, and has hyper-threading. The only thing the Celeron has that the Atom doesn't is a dual-channel memory controller, which really doesn't do the celeron any good.

http://www.hartware.de/review_1587_7.html

the Celeron based on a Sandy Bridge i7 core and is faster than a dual core atom in every benchmark the dual core atom only comes close in the multithreaded benchmarks when it can use all 4 hyperthreaded cores. in single threaded benchmarks the atom is down by 25%-50% depending on the program and the power consumption is the same 25W load.

[Wrigleyvillain]

Can you answer my AMD question? Is the platform reviewed in the machine here newer/better than the combo I linked here?

[Geofrancis]

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Bobcat...es%20C-60.html
Aug 22, 2011
Microarchitecture Bobcat
Platform Brazos
Processor core ? Ontario

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Bobcat...20E2-1800.html
June 5, 2012
Microarchitecture Bobcat
Platform Brazos 2.0
Processor core ? Zacate

[Wrigleyvillain]

Thanks. That's what I thought. Cool; hopefully some attractive new "Brazos 2.0" m-itx combos are forthcoming...

Edit: Ah now I see the integrated GPU diff too--62xx vs 73xx series.

[Geofrancis]

i chopped up the back panel to fit the ports. i dont care how it looks at the moment.


added 2 power switches for the router and VIA board along with power and reset.


cooling system

back up and working


this is still just temporary until i get the antennas fitted then i will sort out the exterior.

[Wrigleyvillain]

Looking good!

[Geofrancis]

Pentium M itx with dual LAN £30
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Via-Epia-V...item20ce97dbd6

[Wrigleyvillain]

Yo yo post some options from this side of the pond yo!

[ste2425]

Finally more pictures