Re: router solutions based on Debian?
Hi Daniel,
> On 24/11/2016, at 04:26, Bernhard Schmidt <berni@birkenwald.de> wrote:
>
> Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> wrote:
>
> Hi Daniel,
>
>> My ISP is upgrading my connection to gigabit on Friday and I suspect my
>> current router may struggle with it.
>>
>> My existing router runs OpenWRT but I've found the firewall and IPsec
>> setup is a little bit constrained in that environment and it is tempting
>> to move to a router running a full OS.
>>
>> I've seen a lot of discussions about making DIY routers running a free
>> OS like Debian, FreeBSD or OpenBSD and I was tempted to go with
>> something like that running Shorewall, strongSwan, DHCP and DNS. Maybe
>> it will also do wifi or maybe the existing router will be a bridge to wifi.
>>
>> Can anybody share any comments or links about this topic?
>>
>> - quiet (fanless), low-power and low cost hardware suitable for Gigabit
>> routing and maybe use as a NAS too. It would also be useful to have
>> fibre support in the router and avoid using a media convertor.
>>
>> - are there any live builds or other out-of-the-box solutions that
>> address this use case particularly well?
>
> My recommendation if you basically want a fanless mini PC is the PC
> Engines APU (2C4 for example). Quadcore 1GHz amd64 with AES-NI, 4 GB
> RAM, 3 GE ports, USB 3.0 external. I recommend using a M2 SSD for boot
> media. With PSU and case it starts around 220 EUR. Debian works out of
> the box.
>
> You can also have a look at the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter line. There are
> models with SFP slot available, even the small models are supposed to be
> able to support GE throughput and are < 100 EUR. They are MIPS Cavium
> boards with a custom kernel, but you can get a rootshell and there is a
> Debian (I think Wheezy at the moment) userland on it. I don't think you
> can get the hardware to be fully-free running a vanilla Debian, so YMMV.
+1 for PCenigines APU boards. Used the predecessors (Alix) for years, now using APU's where higher speeds are required, all running Debian out of the box. These never missed a beat. They also have a SATA port if you'd like to use it as a NAS as well.
SSD is great if you can afford them. They also work with cheaper SD cards.
regards,
Jan
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