PC Router

[Cptn Vortex]

Hi guys, I am having no ends to my router troubles....First my DGL-4300 dies on me, so I replace with a DIR-655, which is now starting to screw up too. I daily have to do a router/modem refresh, usually 2-3 times.... Today, took me an hour and a half before my net was up again.

SO, in the time it took me to get my internet back up, I put together a pretty basic machine, which I want to be my own router/firewall. Its a basic 1.4GHZ P4, 512 RAM and 80 or so GB HD. Any ideas as to what OS to run?? I dont have an optical drive, can I boot from USB? I already have dual 100mb NICs in there, so one in, one out I guess??

I am a big networking n00b, any help is much appreciated!!

[DaleF]

Looked at Smoothwall?

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by Cptn Vortex

Hi guys, I am having no ends to my router troubles....First my DGL-4300 dies on me, so I replace with a DIR-655, which is now starting to screw up too. I daily have to do a router/modem refresh, usually 2-3 times.... Today, took me an hour and a half before my net was up again.

SO, in the time it took me to get my internet back up, I put together a pretty basic machine, which I want to be my own router/firewall. Its a basic 1.4GHZ P4, 512 RAM and 80 or so GB HD. Any ideas as to what OS to run?? I dont have an optical drive, can I boot from USB? I already have dual 100mb NICs in there, so one in, one out I guess??

I am a big networking n00b, any help is much appreciated!!

Welcome to Express 3.0! - SmoothWall.org

But your going to need 2 network cards..

1) For local access to machine
2) For network access to a switch

[Cptn Vortex]

Yeah I have dual NICs in there now. Smoothwall. I will check it out. Thanks guys!

[Jack Rabbit]

Any version of *nix but you have to be a network wallah to get that going.

Check out Astaro in parallel to Smoothwall. Astaro has a lot of the same kind of features, DNS, DHCP, proxy, anti-spam, anti-virus, blah blah blah

m0n0wall is a great distro if all you want is "router" functionality. You can boot from CF or USB and it is extremely lightweight so you can easily build a no-moving-parts system.

[BrainEater]

Yep...My vote would be smoothwall.

If you are going to go the openBSD route , I'd suggest pfsense rather than monowall , it's a great OS.

[Mars]

Another vote for smoothwall.

I ran it on a Pentium 1 (or 2 maybe, trouble remembering now) for a while that I slapped all passive cooling into, didn't even have a PSU fan, so the only noise it ever made was the HDD. :)

[jdrom17]

Smoothwall seems rather interesting...

Might have to consider trying it out this summer. I got this Compaq lying around that would be perfect for something like this.

Shame your DGL-4300 died on you, mines still going strong, though my power adapter fried. Luckily it didn't kill the router. D-Link wants me to buy a new one, so I'm just using one from an old DI-604. Out of curiosity, do you run torrents and other multiple connection programs? That would always kill my DI-624 so perhaps the DI-655 suffers from that too. Also UPnP would kill it too.

[Cptn Vortex]

Nah, mine just cuts out at random, I suspect overheating, which is the same symptoms as my DGL. I think this new box will be some fun.

[death_hawk]

I've always liked IPCOP for the Windows Update caching. It's VERY similiar to smoothwall, but I find there's more plugins. Either that or I can't find any plugins for Smoothwall...