On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 03:18:01PM +1000, Trent W. Buck wrote:
Craig Sanders wrote:
I strongly recommend you get a little netbook computer like an eeepc to handle the internet connection, iptables, dns cache, dhcp server, asterisk and similar relatively light tasks. maybe even squid proxy.
can also act as a wireless AP if you install and configure hostapd.
+1, except I would normally use a Netgear WNDR3800 running OpenWRT.[0] I don't like using netbooks for that role
yeah, i try really hard to like the idea of using a little openwrt compatible router (because they would/could be great), but every time i look into them in any detail, I end up at the same point: 1. finding a model that has all the features you need is next to impossible. maybe i just expect too much, but every time I find a brand/model that seems like it might meet my needs, i find it has some glaring flaw or deficiency that eliminates it from my consideration. 2. There's a substantial risk of bricking them when you replace the vendor-supplied firmware with OpenWRT or upgrade to the latest openwrt. 3. they cost almost as much as a new netbook but have serious deficiencies in CPU power, RAM, and storage. the lack of RAM in particular would make it painful to run memory-hogging services like bind9 and squid. OTOH they do have the advantage of having multiple 100baseT or Gbit ports built-in, and often have adsl built-in too. 4. openwrt is nowhere near as nice or convenient or flexible to use as a "real" linux distribution like debian. openwtt has very few available packages, and it tends to use minimalist versions of common tools (e.g. busybox instead of most of the bin & sbin directories. busybox is a hell of a lot better than nothing but painful if you need anything beyond the most basic functionality) I'm sure they can and do work perfectly for lots of people, but as much as i *want* to like them, I just can't find one that suits my needs. alternatively, a mini-ITX motherboard and case could be used instead of a netbook. but that would end up costing about as much as a new netbook, and wouldn't have a battery or a built-in screen and keyboard. the only advantage is that it would have one or two PCI or PCI-e slots and probably a mini-PCI/PCI-e slot for the wireless card as well.
unless the project budget is $0 and there's a spare one rotting on a shelf.
:) my ancient eeepc 701 was idle until i rescued it from the shelf, blew off the dust, and turned it into my wireless AP. I'm considering turning it into my internet gateway (incl. firewall, asterisk, dns, dhcp, squid, etc) box as well, but it needs either another (USB 2.0) NIC or a USB 2.0 ADSL modem. and maybe another sd card. a Celeron M 900Mhz with 512M RAM and 4GB of flash disk is pretty good for these tasks....sounds ancient today, but it's still a lot better than what i was using for the same job (minus asterisk, but add sendmail and other stuff*) in the mid 90s, a 40Mhz 386 system with 4MB RAM. one of the newer atom or amd fusion based netbooks would be even better. 802.11b, g, and n rather just b & g; more RAM; more powerful cpu, but lower power consumption, and cpu-freq compatible (the eeepc's celeron 900 doesn't support intel speedstep). and lots more USB 2.0 ports than my eeepc 701....might even be possible to find one with USB 3.0 * including a stallion multiport serial card and a bunch of serial terminals with people running elm or pine and lynx and other stuff. and a couple of dial-in modems for friends to use. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au> BOFH excuse #397: T-1's congested due to porn traffic to the news server.