Re: router solutions based on Debian?
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.
Best Regards,
Bernhard
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