I want to build a router, but do I have all the right hardware?

[herbe01]

I wasn't sure if I should put this in the building section or here but it made more sense to me to put it here.


I saw this video on youtube last night where a guy built a router using an old PC and I became interested in doing it myself. I've never really done anything of the sort though (unless flashing ddwrt onto my consumer router counts). I searched through google and answered most of my questions but I still have some.

Firstly, do I have the right hardware?
I'm going to be installing pfsense onto my old machine.
My old PC is just a desktop computer. Intel i3 2100 cpu, ddr3 ram (16GB), onboard graphics and a samsung 850 evo 120gb ssd + a 200GB HDD.

Also, I want to use my current wireless router as an AP. How would I go about doing that? Do I run one ethernet cable from my Modem > pfsense pc(NIC 1) and then another ethernet cable from pfsense pc(NIC 2) > LAN port on my AP? I read this on google. "You will need a managed switch (Look for Vlan tagging), prepare for your internet to NOT work and swap back and forth from one to another until you have it down.". Do I really need a switch? I've never used one of those before nor have I done vlan tagging. I dont expect my internet to disconnect since its just a home network. 1 desktop, one laptop, 2 tablets and 3 cell phones are all that connect to my network.

Lastly, will I have a performance difference if I use an ssd or an hdd? I read on google that if I want to do web caching(which I will) then I should use HDD because it can handle more writes than an ssd. If I use an hdd will that slow down the performance? Do I have to defrag the HDD if I go with that option instead of an ssd?

I really just want to do this as a learning experience. I have no real purpose of doing so other than I have a spare pc and an interest in it.

One more question: My wireless router has 2.4 and 5ghz channels. If I set it up as an AP will I still have both of those channels available? Can I even use my wireless router as an AP like I want to or do I need to buy a wireless card and plug it into my pfsense machine and use that to connect all my wifi devices to?

 

[newtekie1]

You don't need a switch, you can use your old router as a switch and AP. You will have to first turn off DHCP on the old router though, otherwise it will conflict with PFSense. Then just like you said, run a cable from the LAN port on the PFSense computer over to one of the LAN ports on the old router. Don't use the Internet/WAN port on the old router. If the old router has DD-WRT installed on it, it will probably be benefitial to enable STP, and you should be able to bridge the WAN port to the LAN, so you can actually use the Internet/WAN port as another standard LAN port. The old router will handle all the wireless duties, both channels will still be available, in fact you will still have to log into the old router to configure you wireless(though if it is already configure you won't have to change anything related to wireless).

Also, don't waste an SSD on PFSense, there won't be any real performance gain by using an SSD. I'd grab an inexpensive laptop hard drive and run it off that.

 

[Aquinus]

You don't need a switch, you can use your old router as a switch and AP. You will have to first turn off DHCP on the old router though, otherwise it will conflict with PFSense. Then just like you said, run a cable from the LAN port on the PFSense computer over to one of the LAN ports on the old router. Don't use the Internet/WAN port on the old router. If the old router has DD-WRT installed on it, it will probably be benefitial to enable STP, and you should be able to bridge the WAN port to the LAN, so you can actually use the Internet/WAN port as another standard LAN port. The old router will handle all the wireless duties, both channels will still be available, in fact you will still have to log into the old router to configure you wireless(though if it is already configure you won't have to change anything related to wireless).

Also, don't waste an SSD on PFSense, there won't be any real performance gain by using an SSD. I'd grab an inexpensive laptop hard drive and run it off that.

+1 for this. This is exactly what I do with my gateway server. I'm not running pfsense, using bare Debian instead but, the concept it the same. I do this with my Linksys E4200 and it works great. I also added an older Intel 1000-PT dual-port lan card that I got off Amazon for 40 USD so I have 4 dedicated ports on my gateway to work with.