5 ms·

I actually would pay decent money for a device with dual flash to address some of this (like Gigabyte dual BIOS on PC motherboards).

by chx 11y ago

chrissnell 11y ago
If you're willing to pay "decent money" for a router with auto-update, get some PC hardware (even as small as a WRAP or Soekris) and run pfSense. You'll never look back. I love OpenWRT but a $100 Netgear or Linksys device just can't touch a real PC motherboard with Intel NICs. My preferred pfSense platform at both home and the office is a server-grade chassis running ESXi. My router runs in a VM on this server and I use vSwitches to connect the VM to the various ports on the 4-port Intel NIC. I just built it like this for convenience (I already had the ESXi server) but I later found a side-benefit: if you've set up a DMZ on pfSense, you can easily attach VMs to the DMZ by associating them with the DMZ vSwitch. So, I have some untrusted VMs sitting in my DMZ and trusted VMs sitting on my LAN...all on the same piece of hardware. I've been running this way since 2013 and it's been flawless and fast. More details here: http://output.chrissnell.com/post/39550480075/the-jack-of-all-trades-home-server http://output.chrissnell.com/post/39550480075/the-jack-of-al...
- silon7 11y ago
  How much power does that use? I run linux a firewall/router on an older laptop + usb ethernet(2) and it's about 20w. I'd prefer < 10. Perhaps I need to try Raspberry Pi next.
  - bjelkeman-again 11y ago
    I have been running an IPcop firewall on an old PC for ages with three network cards. Just about to replace it with this small thing, also with IPcop, and it runs on a 4 watt power supply. I have realised that by downsizing my servers etc in the basement, now when they are a bit overkill (moved most stuff to a cloud solution) I can save enough electricity to power an electric car for most of the use I would make of it with what I save. http://www.firewallhardware.it/en/alix_pfsense_embedded.html http://www.firewallhardware.it/en/alix_pfsense_embedded.html
  - jlgaddis 11y ago
    The Raspberry Pi is gonna suck as a router due to the "Ethernet on USB". You'd be much happier with one of the boards that chrissnell mentioned above. Personally, I use a "Maxxwave 1106" running BSD I had laying around but it's on the more expensive side. If I was putting something together for myself, I'd get one of the small Atom boards with a couple of onboard Intel NICs.
  - __david__ 11y ago
    I've been running OpenWRT on an PC Engines APU board (4 core x86 based w/ gigabit ethernet). According to the website[1] the power is "About 6 to 12W of 12V DC power depending on CPU load." Before my APU I ran an Alix board[2] for years. It's a little bit more complicated to get running since it requires a custom compiled OpenWRT, but it's great to have more memory and disk space than I'll ever need in my router. I used to run on OpenWRT on reflashed consumer routers and I always had to be real careful about what I installed and ran. With the APU I can just install real `bash` and `less` and not have to deal with the crappy busybox emulations. [1] http://pcengines.ch/apu.htm http://pcengines.ch/apu.htm [2] http://pcengines.ch/alix.htm http://pcengines.ch/alix.htm
  - chopin 11y ago
    As mentioned, the ethernet interface is too slow for this. One could use one of the BananaPi variants for that, afaik there is one which has four independent ethernet ports for use as a router. I use a standard BananaPi as NAS and are very satisfied with it. It comes with a SATA interface and 1Gb ethernet.
darklajid 11y ago
Why don't you just head over to the linked Indiegogo project (Turris) and grab a router that is open hardware, using open source (openwrt based) and has automatic updates?
- narrowrail 11y ago
  I was just checking this out, but I've obviously missed the $180 backer opportunity (which is quite a bit more than the $75 all-in I just spent on my 128MB memory OpenWrt). Are you a backer? I wonder if the smartphone app they are building for the Turris will work with other OpenWrt installs; do you happen to know?
  - darklajid 11y ago
    I'm a backer - but I don't know if that app would work with any OpenWrt based installation. No idea what your current setup is, but I'd guess that this router is more powerful - and comes with the advantages we discussed here: The hardware is open (you can even get one with exposed connectors/a serial cable to mess with ~everything~), the software is open, you get a 'distribution' with updates by a NIC. It's worth the money for me, but I understand if you're considering a generic OpenWrt based setup good enough. That's what I'm on right now, what works for me until this box arrives. And for me, an upgrade to 11ac was planned anyway, so this just came up when I was looking at new hardware anyway.
  - ofutur 11y ago
    At the "discounted" $275 (2GB version + EU shipping), it's more expensive than embedded x86 solutions (APU2b4 or Celeron N) while being less powerful and flexible (the power consumption is the same). Still a nice toy to play with, especially with all the connectors it offers and I can see this being a hit with iOS fans since it's supposed to be super easy to administer using their custom GUI and video tutorials, so worth the asking price.
mschuster91 11y ago
You don't need dual flash, just use U-Boot with the bootcount feature to implement failover.
kazkas 11y ago
Now you can and you have 3 days to decide: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/turris-omnia-hi-performance-open-source-router#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/turris-omnia-hi-performan...
chei0aiV 11y ago
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/turris-omnia-hi-performance-open-source-router https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/turris-omnia-hi-performan...

I actually would pay decent money for a device with dual flash to address some of this (like Gigabyte dual BIOS on PC motherboards).

by chx 11y ago

I actually would pay decent money for a device with dual flash to address some of this (like Gigabyte dual BIOS on PC motherboards).

chrissnell 11y ago

If you're willing to pay "decent money" for a router with auto-update, get some PC hardware (even as small as a WRAP or Soekris) and run pfSense. You'll never look back. I love OpenWRT but a $100 Netgear or Linksys device just can't touch a real PC motherboard with Intel NICs. My preferred pfSense platform at both home and the office is a server-grade chassis running ESXi. My router runs in a VM on this server and I use vSwitches to connect the VM to the various ports on the 4-port Intel NIC. I just built it like this for convenience (I already had the ESXi server) but I later found a side-benefit: if you've set up a DMZ on pfSense, you can easily attach VMs to the DMZ by associating them with the DMZ vSwitch. So, I have some untrusted VMs sitting in my DMZ and trusted VMs sitting on my LAN...all on the same piece of hardware. I've been running this way since 2013 and it's been flawless and fast. More details here: http://output.chrissnell.com/post/39550480075/the-jack-of-all-trades-home-server http://output.chrissnell.com/post/39550480075/the-jack-of-al...

silon7 11y ago
How much power does that use? I run linux a firewall/router on an older laptop + usb ethernet(2) and it's about 20w. I'd prefer < 10. Perhaps I need to try Raspberry Pi next.
- bjelkeman-again 11y ago
  I have been running an IPcop firewall on an old PC for ages with three network cards. Just about to replace it with this small thing, also with IPcop, and it runs on a 4 watt power supply. I have realised that by downsizing my servers etc in the basement, now when they are a bit overkill (moved most stuff to a cloud solution) I can save enough electricity to power an electric car for most of the use I would make of it with what I save. http://www.firewallhardware.it/en/alix_pfsense_embedded.html http://www.firewallhardware.it/en/alix_pfsense_embedded.html
- jlgaddis 11y ago
  The Raspberry Pi is gonna suck as a router due to the "Ethernet on USB". You'd be much happier with one of the boards that chrissnell mentioned above. Personally, I use a "Maxxwave 1106" running BSD I had laying around but it's on the more expensive side. If I was putting something together for myself, I'd get one of the small Atom boards with a couple of onboard Intel NICs.
- __david__ 11y ago
  I've been running OpenWRT on an PC Engines APU board (4 core x86 based w/ gigabit ethernet). According to the website[1] the power is "About 6 to 12W of 12V DC power depending on CPU load." Before my APU I ran an Alix board[2] for years. It's a little bit more complicated to get running since it requires a custom compiled OpenWRT, but it's great to have more memory and disk space than I'll ever need in my router. I used to run on OpenWRT on reflashed consumer routers and I always had to be real careful about what I installed and ran. With the APU I can just install real `bash` and `less` and not have to deal with the crappy busybox emulations. [1] http://pcengines.ch/apu.htm http://pcengines.ch/apu.htm [2] http://pcengines.ch/alix.htm http://pcengines.ch/alix.htm
- chopin 11y ago
  As mentioned, the ethernet interface is too slow for this. One could use one of the BananaPi variants for that, afaik there is one which has four independent ethernet ports for use as a router. I use a standard BananaPi as NAS and are very satisfied with it. It comes with a SATA interface and 1Gb ethernet.

darklajid 11y ago

Why don't you just head over to the linked Indiegogo project (Turris) and grab a router that is open hardware, using open source (openwrt based) and has automatic updates?

narrowrail 11y ago
I was just checking this out, but I've obviously missed the $180 backer opportunity (which is quite a bit more than the $75 all-in I just spent on my 128MB memory OpenWrt). Are you a backer? I wonder if the smartphone app they are building for the Turris will work with other OpenWrt installs; do you happen to know?
- darklajid 11y ago
  I'm a backer - but I don't know if that app would work with any OpenWrt based installation. No idea what your current setup is, but I'd guess that this router is more powerful - and comes with the advantages we discussed here: The hardware is open (you can even get one with exposed connectors/a serial cable to mess with ~everything~), the software is open, you get a 'distribution' with updates by a NIC. It's worth the money for me, but I understand if you're considering a generic OpenWrt based setup good enough. That's what I'm on right now, what works for me until this box arrives. And for me, an upgrade to 11ac was planned anyway, so this just came up when I was looking at new hardware anyway.
- ofutur 11y ago
  At the "discounted" $275 (2GB version + EU shipping), it's more expensive than embedded x86 solutions (APU2b4 or Celeron N) while being less powerful and flexible (the power consumption is the same). Still a nice toy to play with, especially with all the connectors it offers and I can see this being a hit with iOS fans since it's supposed to be super easy to administer using their custom GUI and video tutorials, so worth the asking price.

mschuster91 11y ago

You don't need dual flash, just use U-Boot with the bootcount feature to implement failover.

kazkas 11y ago

Now you can and you have 3 days to decide: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/turris-omnia-hi-performance-open-source-router#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/turris-omnia-hi-performan...

chei0aiV 11y ago

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/turris-omnia-hi-performance-open-source-router https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/turris-omnia-hi-performan...