Linux Machine Router?

[Decker87]

Hi. I have a copy of Linux Linspire which I'm ready to try using. I've never used Linux before, but when the idea of having a separate computer for torrents came about, I remembered I'd heard you can use a Linux machine as a wireless router.

How is this done?
Will it handle torrents better than a cheap netgear router?
What sort of specs do I need for this?
Can I use a windows machine to remotely control a linux machine?

 

[ndruw]

generally its done using distributions like IPCop and Smoothwall, i dont know how efficient it would be on linspire

yes, it should handle all network traffic better, but you might have a bit of trouble setting up the wireless at first

specs - basically any old computer lying around

yes, using a program called Putty

 

[Decker87]

That's all what I wanted to hear. Currently my wireless router is being killed by torrents because of all the connections.

I was thinking about using Linspire because it costs $50 and I got it for free, so I figured its probably better than most free ones.

Essentially what I want to do is have one machine:
-act as a wireless router for at least 50ft, through a floor+walls
-run a torrent client (are there any good ones for linux?)
-run an ftp server
-possibly act as a genesis emulator

Is this possible? I was looking into the possibility of using a VIA mobo.

 

[Rakinos]

What you want to do are two separte things.

First off, just because it normally costs money doesn't make it all around better. As a router monowall, IPcop, or pfSense (my favorite) would be the distro of choice. They are all light on resources and are designed as a router/firewall. As such, they are very secure and easy to setup. Most people just grab an old box, get it installed, and then run it headless (no monitor). All of these distros are designed to be controlled/admin'ed through a web interface.

You really shouldn't run any type of server let alone a torrent client on your router as this can result in many security holes as well as more points of failure. You don't want a torrent client chewing up all the clock cycles.

My suggestion. Find an old dell, use it as the router, then, if you want to still have another box for the other tasks, get the via mobo that you were looking at and throw linspire on that and use it as more of a workstation.

 

[Xipher]

Linspire is actually a security nightmare. Last I heard, they had the default user setup as root (uid=0), which is VERY BAD.

 

[Decker87]

Truthfully, security is not a top priority here. There are very few things that are very important that I deal with on my computers.

 

[Malk-a-mite]

There are very few things that are very important that I deal with on my computers.

Processer time and bandwidth, two very attractive targets.

 

[andres9606t]

Truthfully, security is not a top priority here. There are very few things that are very important that I deal with on my computers.

It's doesn't matter. Linspire is designed to be a Linux desktop, not a server or router. I would highly recommend something along the lines of IPcop or Smoothwall instead. They will be easier to set up, faster, and much more secure. You'll soon find that in the Linux world, the free distributions are often times significantly better than the ones you pay for (a good example being Debian).

http://www.ipcop.org/
http://smoothwall.org/

Oh, and just in case you missed it, LINSPIRE IS NOT DESIGNED FOR ROUTING OR MEANT TO DO SO, USE A DIFFERENT LINUX DISTRIBUTION! I don't care if you got it for free. It may be a somewhat decent desktop, although I would recommend Ubuntu any day, but it definitely sucks as a server/router.

 

[Decker87]

It's doesn't matter. Linspire is designed to be a Linux desktop, not a server or router. I would highly recommend something along the lines of IPcop or Smoothwall instead. They will be easier to set up, faster, and much more secure. You'll soon find that in the Linux world, the free distributions are often times significantly better than the ones you pay for (a good example being Debian).

http://www.ipcop.org/
http://smoothwall.org/

Oh, and just in case you missed it, LINSPIRE IS NOT DESIGNED FOR ROUTING OR MEANT TO DO SO, USE A DIFFERENT LINUX DISTRIBUTION! I don't care if you got it for free. It may be a somewhat decent desktop, although I would recommend Ubuntu any day, but it definitely sucks as a server/router.

Heh, cool it man. I'm not even close to going with linspire, I ditched that Idea when the first guy told me to not use it...I'm trying to figure out if it's a good idea to just buy an old junk PC and use that, or get the experience of building mini-ITX.

Is using one machine for rom gaming, torrenting, and routing really such a bad idea? Does that take too much ram?

 

[andres9606t]

Heh, cool it man. I'm not even close to going with linspire, I ditched that Idea when the first guy told me to not use it...I'm trying to figure out if it's a good idea to just buy an old junk PC and use that, or get the experience of building mini-ITX.

Is using one machine for rom gaming, torrenting, and routing really such a bad idea? Does that take too much ram?

Depends on the specs really. I run a VIA SP8000 board as a router/traffic shaper/firewall and it's plenty fast for that (and handles me downloading multiple torrents with no problem whatsoever), but it's not suitable for anything requiring any real speed. I don't know if it would be fast enough for emulation. Are you planning to have a monitor on this box? How are you planning to do the emulation? If you can (and space isn't an issue), I'd recommend building a cheap Sempron box, or waiting for a good deal on a Dell server. Building a mini-itx machine is just like building a regular PC, except it's smaller, a lot slower, and costs more.

Here's a fairly fast, dual core, cheap dell machine that might work ($399 as I post this, found on slickdeals.net)

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&fb=1&kc=Aff&l=en&oc=sc430dc399&s=bsd

You'll have to throw in a cheap 10/100 NIC or two, but that shouldn't be more than an additional $30, if that.