do you wanna build a router?
- April 11th, 2017
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Here at the Lair we’ve been proud of running – as a server, on the actual internet – a machine literally from 1995, with original motherboard CPU and everything. The plan has been to run it ’till it died, because we can.
But unfortunately, we really do need to build a new proper programmable router, so we can put the terrible, terrible Comcast router into bridge mode. (Seriously: this router is terrible.) And the 1995 machine is… not fast, so we can’t use it, even though that was its original job, years ago.
(It’s a P5-166. No, really. Thank you, Debian.)
But I haven’t built a router in a while. I want to run Debian Linux on it so it can also run DNS and a couple of other small services the current P166 runs, and it wouldn’t hurt for it to have three cards inside either – one for the fixed-IP side of the LAN, one for the DHCP side.
SO!
Anybody have recommendations? I’m thinking about gigabit network cards in particular – what has the best, most reliable, fastest drivers, what specifically to avoid, things like that. As above, we’re going to be running Debian for a a bunch of reasons.
7 comments on Dreamwidth.
I’ve been planning to move to a PC-Engines APU2 as part of gutting some of the more complex networking equipment I’ve got set up. I’ll be using pfSense or straight FreeBSD, but it seems there’s a lot of people using Debian on it, too. Good NICs with good drivers on both Linux and FreeBSD.
https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm
This is smaller/weirder than I was thinking – I know nothing about this form factor but that’s not a disqualification, particularly since some models have three NICs.
But more importantly I don’t see any kind of video support here. I need something that supports a direct-connect console head, specifically VGA, because that’s what the rest of our stack uses and I want to keep everything on one switch. (I have a zillion antique video cards I will keep using since all we ever, ever use is text.)
Ah, yeah, that would make a difference. This is sort of the standard kind of thing for routers these days, but if serial console doesn’t fly, then obviously looking elsewhere is necessary. I think on that front I’d kind of think of one of the Atom D525 boards and their descendants, which typically have VGA as well as decent Intel NICs, etc.
It strikes me as almost freakishly retro to be talking about a serial console. I kind of like it! But I do want to use the same interface as the rest of the stack.
(Sung to the tune of “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?”)
Of course!