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What is the moble network when u can call all the networks?

Replace my aging network router

  • Help me replace my aging home OpenBSD desktop machine running mail, DNS, DHCP, apache and pf with something quieter and more power efficient. For about 10 years now I've run a pretty similar setup on my home networks.I'll have some sort of not super-fast consumer broadband with static IPs (DSL, in my case).I'll plug the broadband into the first network interface of a really old desktop machine with OpenBSD and two network interfaces which I'll call the router. (This is running qmail, djbdns, dhcpd, apache serving only static content, some very minor packet filtering, and network address translation.)Then, I'll plug a generic switch into the second network interface of the router, and one of those unfortunate consumer wireless access points (WAP) into the switch. (Currently, this is a netgear wireless router that I restart all the time, previously, it was a series of Linksys wireless routers that didn't work at all.)Right now an old Dell desktop (a 233 Mhz PII with 128M RAM and a 12G HDD) is acting as the router, and it's really loud and probably costing about $5-10/month to run in power. I'd like to replace it with one or more low power embedded type devices, but I have no idea which to consider. On one hand, I've been looking at the http://www.soekris.com/net5501.htm. It seems to have the same specifications as my current really old router, but I think it's passively cooled and takes virtually no power. However, I've never used one before, and I'm not sure whether I need to worry about constant writes to compact flash, and/or whether there are competitors I should be aware of. I would probably install OpenBSD on compact flash and have a similar setup to my current one. On the other hand, I've been looking at the various consumer hack-able single purpose devices, like any of the wireless routers that run http://www.dd-wrt.com/ or http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato. Likewise, people seem to hack random devices like the NSLU2 to have http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Unslung/HomePage on them, but I'm not sure whether this is actually usable in practice or more for fun. While these solutions seem like they wouldn't be as general, I wouldn't feel terrible outsourcing my DNS to the cloud (so long as I could do the same sorts of things, and possibly put up a SPF record), but I'd like to keep my e-mail (mostly forwarding and mailing lists) and apache in house, and I still need the network address translation and packet filtering. So I guess this question boils down to: what sorts of embedded devices do you use at home to solve these problems, and do you use any third party services to complement your solution?

  • Answer:

    Heh, your question almost exactly describes me. (Except I run postfix and innd on my openbsd firewallbox.) A number of people I know use and like the Soekris boards for this application, though I don't know the exact details of their setups. I'm currently looking at using an old Mac Mini for the purpose, but I'd have to use a usb ethernet adapter for one of the ports (yuck). I've messed with putting other OSs on WRT54 and NSLU2 systems, but I wouldn't use them for mail services. I'm pretty sure that, given the shape of the computer market, you're going to have a hard time beating the combination of a year-old power-efficient PC clone and a magnetic disk with 'atactl acousticset' cranked all the way down. You could avoid writing to compact flash by using something like a union mount with a memory filesystem, though of course you'd need to figure out what to do about log files, mail spool, the dhcp lease database, and so on. You can avoid a lot of writes just by mounting with noatime though.

pbh at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

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I used to do this sort of thing with DD-WRT (and later Tomato). I preferred to keep the content separate from the network stuff, so that was done by a NSLU2 (with Unslung). They (even together) have ridiculously low power requirements. I still have the static IP, but have since outsourced all that stuff. When the WRT54G died I just picked up some random replacement (from Linksys also I believe) but didn't flash it to anything custom. It was tremendously fast not having to put another distro on it. Similarly my email is now handled by Google, and web on a VPS elsewhere. It's worked out much better for me, more time to do other stuff.

RikiTikiTavi

on further consideration, this looks almost perfect: http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-24-openrd-client-openrd-client-board-with-enclosure.aspx. Fanless, tons of ports, $250.

scruss

Does a non-x86 system interest you? Might consider an ARM system such as these: http://gumstix.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=31&products_id=227 http://beagleboard.org/

at

I've got an Asus WL500G router—these come with a 266Mhz processor and a couple of USB slots enabling you to plug in an external storage device. Set up like this you can get it to run a full http://wpkg.org/Running_Debian_on_ASUS_WL-500G_deluxe, and it would take care of your wireless network as well. It's noiseless, small and comes with four ethernet ports.

tallus

I was really just picking out what NewEgg had as the combos, which aren't necessarily the best cases -- there are certainly fanless or 120mm fan-based MiniITX cases to be had. The cheap http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101074 also come to mind, and they usually have a spare slot for an additional network card. That might be more hardware than you need -- those things can feasibly run multiple guest OSes on VMWare ESXi -- but one of those OSes can be your router/server.

holgate

http://ask.metafilter.com/125814/Replace-my-aging-network-router#1797598: "supposedly, the Lenovo http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087&current-category-id=3BF3F158E7104FBE8B14800ADB6A41B0 is a fanless Atom-based desktop. it's in a mini-tower case but it's not clear whether it has an extra pci slot in there..." This seems really promising, especially because I could be pretty lazy and it's still pretty cheap. I'm sort of sad I can't find any real information on it, and "fanless" does seem a little deceptive if there's a case fan, but I'm presuming that Linux support is assumed because all the Atom boards seem to be almost exactly the same. I'm sort of surprised that nobody like Silent PC Review has reviewed any Atom desktops, but maybe they cater more to hobbyists?

pbh

this http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4471546&csid=ITD&body=MAIN#detailspecs at TigerDirect has a bit more information on the H200. it has an extra pci slot and the motherboard is fanless...case fan probably isn't 120mm though...

geos

If you are used to a "real" system running OpenBSD, I don't think you'll be happy with OpenWRT. I have both an OpenWRT router and a Linux server (a giant old Dell beast with Raid-5 SCSI disks, the works; it's probably environmentally equivalent to shooting a manatee or something every time it starts up). The reason I keep the server around is because I don't think that the router is really a server replacement. It's a fine router, and far better than the factory firmware, but it's not ever going to be a satisfactory replacement for all the things I have going on the big server. However, there are plenty of low-power servers that would replace your "aging desktop" (and would replace my server, and probably will soon). I found this http://ask.metafilter.com/62029/A-low-power-home-server. I thought the suggestion of a Mac Mini pretty interesting; it's built with all laptop components, but it's still a desktop machine, so you don't have to worry with some of the problems inherent in using a laptop as a server (like turning the screen off, or cooling with the top down). You can run OpenBSD, NetBSD, or any one of many Linux flavors on the Mini, too. Alternately, if you want to go the DIY route, there are a lot of people using http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=45452 as servers, in SFF cases. I think the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SqueezeCenter, which is now called the http://www.logitechsqueezebox.com/support/download-squeezecenter.html (really, Logitech, really?), is based on a Via proc and mobo. It's well-regarded and might be something to consider. There also seem to be a lot of people using low-power SFF machines based on the Intel Atom, which I don't really know very much about. However I have seen some tempting barebones machines at NewEgg that are Atom based, for only a couple hundred bucks (less HD). If you didn't want to go SFF (because you want multiple NICs — although if you have Gigabit you could just bond several virtual interfaces to one physical NIC without hurting performance), you could just get a low-power motherboard and put it in your existing case, with a high-efficiency power supply. The key to high efficiency seems to be minimal graphics (irrelevant for a server), low power CPU, and properly sized PSU operating at 85%+. Your choice of disks also seems to figure into it, but much less so. Anyway, if you're used to having root on a real machine, with real disks and running whatever applications you feel like running, I don't think that a uber-minimalist machine like you'd get from a Linux firmware on a router is going to make you happy. (Not to say that they don't make fine routers ... DD-WRT makes a WRT54GL into a very nice router and AP, but it doesn't make it into a server.) Get a small, efficient sever that meets your needs, and keep the components separate.

Kadin2048

supposedly, the Lenovo http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087&current-category-id=3BF3F158E7104FBE8B14800ADB6A41B0 is a fanless Atom-based desktop. it's in a mini-tower case but it's not clear whether it has an extra pci slot in there...

geos

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