By the time you get to managed switches, the cost of the device and the overhead to maintain it means that the location usually has an IT person to handle this.

By the time you get to managed switches, the cost of the device and the overhead to maintain it means that the location usually has an IT person to handle this. This is not our target demographic. A Soekris board is a very small Geode based i386 computer with 4 network ports. It has one usb 2.0, one minipci and one full sized pci. We use the pci for the "modem" device (T1 interface, cable modem, dsl card), the minipci for the wireless radio "bake in" and the usb for local storage. The OS boots and runs read-only from a compact flash card inside the case. pfsense was too limiting, we use 4 gig CF's with full centos 5 server distros for maximum utility. Here's the mainboard we use http://www.soekris.com/net5501.htm http://www.soekris.com/net5501.htm Here's where we get the broadband interface cards: http://www.sangoma.com/products/ http://www.sangoma.com/products/ All the wireless cards and antennas come form netgate, as previously mentioned. Hmmm. Sounds like I need a big blog post about bootstrapping this kind of business for those interested. Stay tuned.