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DIY Linux Gateway

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just search for 3.5 inch motherboard, there are a lot of them on ebay but they are usually 486 or amd geode . this was the first one i saw that had a cpu over 800mhz for under £50 and dual lan
 
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t_ski

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things still to do=
solder the power cables of the motherboard to the routers DC jack'
drill cooling vents and possibly install a fan

For these two items, I'd like to offer a couple of suggestions:

1. instead of soldering the wires directly, consider using some kind of connector in-between, just in case you need to work on it in the future.

2. an easy way to go about this might be to cut a large hole for the fan and use some acrylic or other custom fan grills like this:

http://www.frozencpu.com/cat/l3/g47...s-Fan_Grills-80mm_Laser_Cut_Grills-Page1.html
 
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Very cool stuff. I knew one could build a linux router, but not with this hardware.
 
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For these two items, I'd like to offer a couple of suggestions:

1. instead of soldering the wires directly, consider using some kind of connector in-between, just in case you need to work on it in the future.

2. an easy way to go about this might be to cut a large hole for the fan and use some acrylic or other custom fan grills like this:

http://www.frozencpu.com/cat/l3/g47...s-Fan_Grills-80mm_Laser_Cut_Grills-Page1.html

1. good idea i could probably butcher a molex connector together to use as a power connector but i would like something a little more robust like a deans connector from my rc boats.

2. i had not got as far as thinking about bling yet lol. but i do like the fan grille idea even if i didn't have to use a fan it would be a big enough opening for the heat to rise up and out the top of the case. the only thing that would worry me about that setup would be stuff falling inside the router thats why i was thinking about small holes.
 

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my internet just started freeking out it was the router overheating so i have a 50mm fan blowing in it just now till i work out my next move.
 
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i think i am going to heatsink the cpu on the router so that it dissapates the heat better and once some vents are cut in the case it should be able to vent the heat out of the case without a fan.
 

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This is one of the cooler as well as informative threads here in some time.
 
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ordered some new parts:
dual illuminated 12v rocker switch
10x 4 pin red green blue leds.
2x push button switches for power, reset and router reset.
25mm fan and guard for the overheating problem.


The dual 12v rocker switch is to allow me to turn both the Netgear router and VIA board on and off independently and its blue so its looks cool.

The RGB leds will be going onto the front panel along with the switches.

some of these will be wired to the router to replace its onboard leds. they will replace the dual colour green and orange leds for 10mbit and 100mbit and power status with red and blue.

the rest will be used on the via board one for the power and hard drive status and 2 for the lan ports blue for lan connected and blinking red when its transmitting.

the fan will be mounted somewhere near the front and will just be powered from one of the via boards thermally controlled fan headers. i will be heat sinking the Negear router's CPU so that it should run a lot cooler than with nothing.
 
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my power switch

Fan guard
 
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When you are finished, could you please make a complete list of parts with prices.
 
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When you are finished, could you please make a complete list of parts with prices.

so far its:
£30.00 netgear WNDR3300 router
£26.00 Via Motherboard'
£ 5.39 Project box
£ 8.31 3x 5ghz antennas
£ 2.38 2x 2.4ghz antennas
£ 4.95 5x rp-sma leads
£ 4.44 2x push button switches
£ 1.42 25mm fan
£ 1.69 fan guard
£ 3.39 10x RGB LEDs
£ 2.50 rocker switch

£90.47

plus a 12v power supply i already had.
 
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is there a firewall/router operating system that would run ok on my hardware but still has a gui with a bandwith monitor? i want to mount a 4.8" lcd monitor to the case so i can watch the internet speed, latency and system performance something like the Belkin N1.
 

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IPFire maybe? Haven't used it myself yet but I believe it meets your requirements (been ported to ARM even and will run on a Raspberry Pi etc).
 
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i think its only basic config in ipfire via vga. something like the damn small linux gui would be nice
 
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i found some nice motherboards on ebay if anyone is looking to build something similar.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Via-Epia-...aptopMotherboards_CPUs_CA&hash=item20ce97dbd6

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TEAN-MB89...aptopMotherboards_CPUs_CA&hash=item53e623bb55

both are socket 479 pentium M ITX dual LAN for just £30


http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-Asus-M...754681591?pt=Motherboards&hash=item5652b37af7

for those wanting a little more power the HP Asus MOCA it will take a socket M core duo or core 2 duo and 3gb ddr2. and has a pcie 16x slot that will let you use a raid controller or network adapter. you also need a power supply adapter from ebay that costs $5

i used to have one in my old server runninga passive 2ghz core 2 duo.
 
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i dont like the atom dual core chips but the i3 would be nice! shame about the price.
 

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i dont like the atom dual core chips but the i3 would be nice! shame about the price.

That's how I feel but a gateway really doesn't need to have much power. It needs to consume as little as possible and for network routing, I'm sure a 2550 is more than up to the task.
 
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one of the i3 based celeron single cores would be plenty and give much more reliable performance.
 

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You sure about IPFire and the GUI? Says it is based off Damn Small Linux.
 

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give much more reliable performance.

Less heat would mean that the atom would be more reliable because it has a lower TDP and it consumes less power. So the only thing that would turn me off from the atom is 4Gb limitation, otherwise a dual-core with hyper-threading and a 10 watt TDP isn't too shabby. So all in all the claim that Atoms are less reliable is crap. A very real consideration is speed but a G2020 is going to consume that much more power for that speed and for a gateway it really isn't necessary.
 
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Less heat would mean that the atom would be more reliable because it has a lower TDP and it consumes less power. So the only thing that would turn me off from the atom is 4Gb limitation, otherwise a dual-core with hyper-threading and a 10 watt TDP isn't too shabby. So all in all the claim that Atoms are less reliable is crap. A very real consideration is speed but a G2020 is going to consume that much more power for that speed and for a gateway it really isn't necessary.

i just mean that a powerful low TDP single core will give more predictable performance than trying to finely thread it so it runs over 4 virtual cores that will lag if one reaches 100% utilisation.
 

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i just mean that a powerful low TDP single core will give more predictable performance than trying to finely thread it so it runs over 4 virtual cores that will lag if one reaches 100% utilisation.

You'll never reach 100% on network traffic alone on an Atom. At work we have a 2.0Ghz Xeon dual-core skt771 and it barely even registers load during peek hours. That power really in unnecessary and 100% utilization isn't realistic under normal operation. So as a gateway and a gateway alone, it's a waste of power and money. Also I don't think there are any 1 core skt1155 chips.
 
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