x86 Router Software - Help!

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MadHatter

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 8, 2005
Messages
150
Hey everyone,

I've had it with this 200mHz linksys WRT54G.. I have the latest DD-WRT firmware and it's been horrible lately. I'm wanting to just ditch it and use a box as the router. I'll probably use a p3 with 256mb or something roughly equivalent.

The problem is I'm not too familiar with all of the open source software solutions out there for this task. Ive researched smoothwall a bit, as well as untangle. Untangle seems a little too n00b friendly and bloated (looking at min. system requirements). Smoothwall seems alright but the GUI just looks horrible. Any other ideas?

Thanks for any input! :)
 
untangle is hardly bloated in terms of system requirements...yes it needs a bit of oomph compared to 'typical' linux router distro's, but have you seen everything that platform is capable of?! it's freakin amazing is what it is!!!

p3 with 256 megs...pfsense might be the way to go...seems to be getting some good ratings around here at the moment, especially for it's qos implementation.
 
Not sure on the stand alone untangle install, but, the windows rerouter, it seems it needs a lot of resources, so, I would say no to the re-router on the p3.

I am running PFsense here, actually just replaced a dd-wrt based router. So far, I am happy with it. I am running it currently on a p4 1.6ghz box with 768mb ram, prob overkill for at home. I am looking at ITX and mATX solutions to take up less space.
 
All Untangle needs is a low horsepower P4 with ~512mb of ram. Thats not all that much to ask for considering everything it does.
 
What specific features are you looking for?

If you want just a basic router....there are distros such as IPCop, m0n0wall, Smoothwall, etc...which fulfill those needs.

If you want a distro with fantanstic QoS features...PFSense does an excellent job, it is top notch in traffic shaping...so users doing stuff on your network don't impact others as much. I run this at home on one of my old Thinkpad laptops, just a P3 with 256 megs..it's small, low electrical requirements, low noise, and a built in battery backup!

If you want UTM features such as antivirus scanning, etc...look at the "Copfilter" add-on for IPCop, or Endian, or if you feel like providing more power...Untangle.

But...it goes back to...what features specifically are you looking for?

MadHatter said:
I'll probably use a p3 with 256mb or something roughly equivalent.

The problem is I'm not too familiar with all of the open source software solutions out there for this task. Ive researched smoothwall a bit, as well as untangle. Untangle seems a little too n00b friendly and bloated (looking at min. system requirements). Smoothwall seems alright but the GUI just looks horrible. Any other ideas?
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for the responses guys. I'll have to look into PFsense, I hadn't heard of it before.

I am requiring just most of the basic functionality but hopefully with some graphing of overall WAN traffic. I don't want any additional stuff running such as anti-virus support, which is why when I look at untangle it looks bloated to me.
 
It has some graphing of overall traffic. There is also a great free easy to install plugin called "BandwidthD" that I run, which breaks down traffic quite detailed for each internal workstation/client.

Plus a good "dashboard" plugin.

It's a great, lightweight distro that is very fast, and the traffic shaping is great. I set P2P/download traffic for low priority, web traffic for medium, and gaming as well as VoIP traffic as top priority. I also set a manual cap for download/upload of files. This way....other users on my network don't impact my online gaming much at all, and VoIP via Vonage is as good as it gets.
 
Please do keep power consumption in mind, as running a computer all the time will take far more power than a home router.
 
Does untangle have the same QOS stuff as pfsense? I was also looking into a new router box, using a low powered atom.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
If you want UTM features such as antivirus scanning, etc...look at the "Copfilter" add-on for IPCop, or Endian, or if you feel like providing more power...Untangle.
Click to expand...

What's the specs required look like on the "copfilter" or Endian? From my experience, running untangle in the re-router form, it seems like it needs a lot of resources, but, you are after all, running windows, then VMplayer which runs linux/untangle on top of windows.

I've also noticed at home with a pretty "stout" box for untangle, it seems I need to restart the box every few days or my internet starts to time out on page loads.
 
m0n0wall or pfSense gets my vote. The only thing with pfSense is they are usually in a constant state of beta. Pick up the latest 1.21RC and you should be good.

If you wanted to scale back down your power usage, they both run on ALIX boards in addition to regular x86.
 
sc0tty8 said:
What's the specs required look like on the "copfilter" or Endian? From my experience, running untangle in the re-router form, it seems like it needs a lot of resources, but, you are after all, running windows, then VMplayer which runs linux/untangle on top of windows.

I've also noticed at home with a pretty "stout" box for untangle, it seems I need to restart the box every few days or my internet starts to time out on page loads.
Click to expand...

I've run 'em all. Endian runs comfy on a mid-range P3, and gets good around 512 megs of RAM. I've run it and IPCop/Copfilter on 256 megs....they ran OK, but I noticed bumping the RAM up, things were more responsive. They seemed to average consuming in the mid-300s as far as RAM use when just sitting there doing nothing.

One thing...when I ran the ad-block function of Copfilter on a P3...it was sluggish on a P3..but much snappier on a P4. Didn't find that function useful though, make some forum behaviour "quirky".

Untangles re-router is cool for show 'n tell 'n sales..but not for a production environment. I think it's pretty cool how they get it to work with that arp poisoning magic.

I preferred Endian over IPCop/Copfilter (which Endian is based on). Much more polished package.
 
Power isn't an issue for me.. my university covers all electric costs :) I have close to 10 boxes running now..
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
I've run 'em all. Endian runs comfy on a mid-range P3, and gets good around 512 megs of RAM. I've run it and IPCop/Copfilter on 256 megs....they ran OK, but I noticed bumping the RAM up, things were more responsive. They seemed to average consuming in the mid-300s as far as RAM use when just sitting there doing nothing.

One thing...when I ran the ad-block function of Copfilter on a P3...it was sluggish on a P3..but much snappier on a P4. Didn't find that function useful though, make some forum behaviour "quirky".

Untangles re-router is cool for show 'n tell 'n sales..but not for a production environment. I think it's pretty cool how they get it to work with that arp poisoning magic.

I preferred Endian over IPCop/Copfilter (which Endian is based on). Much more polished package.
Click to expand...

I know what you mean, I've tried them all too and my opinion is pretty much the same as yours. I prefer endian over the IPCop with Copfilter combo as well. I currenty have an Endian box running on an old dell gx150 (p3 933 with 512ram) at one of our offices and love it, I never have to touch it. It serves about 30 - 35 PCs with ease, 14 of which are in a small lab/testing room which are connected to the blue zone with lots of filtering enabled. I would have ran an untangle box but didn't have a spare machine that was really capable.
 
Yes, I'm definitely trying to make the most of it. Just an update: took some of the advice and tried pfSense, and I'm blown away by how great it is! Very responsive and speeds are amazing. Really boosted everything from switching from the linksys (which I will probably just configure as an AP now)! I actually do have 512mb in the machine (thought i only had 256 :-P ). I'm a little afraid I'm missing an important security setting since I'm not used to the layout for rules, but I'll just keep watching logs and getting more acquainted with the interface. Thanks everyone for all the feedback! I have a feeling I'll be using pfSense for quite a while :)
 
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