Linux router project

[bob]

Im bulding a router using an old laptop I have. I dont really want to buy a more newish laptop, since they all seem to cost an arm and a leg for more than a 486.

Specs: P133, 800Mb hard drive, 21MB of ram, dual 16-bit PCMCIA (getting some 3com cards from a hardforum member), no floppy drive, no cdrom drive. LCD screen has been gutted down to its bare parts, and im going to mount that somewhere else.

Anyways, It seems freesco is the only OS that will comfortable run on this laptop due to memory. I was really wanting to use monowall, since I need bandwidth limiting. But Monowall says it recomends at least 64MB of ram, and does not use a swap file.

Anyone know of another captive-portal type distro with bandwidth shaping, or will I just have to stick with freecso?

 

[Q-Ball]

I think it really depends on how much work your router is going to be doing. I'm running a m0n0wall box with 96MB of RAM, but I've never seen it above 25% memory usage. I only use my router for basic Internet service, though. If you're going to have all kinds of complicated traffic-shaping rules and/or use VPN, then you'll more than likely want the recommended amount of RAM. For basic stuff (routing, a few basic firewall rules), I bet you could get away with 32MB of RAM on a m0n0wall box.

Best way to find out is to try it and see