3 ms·

Where did you find a modem card? I tried to do that a few months ago too, as I'm already running a homelab server 24/7, but couldn't find any cards supporting

by ffsm8 3y ago

Where did you find a modem card? I tried to do that a few months ago too, as I'm already running a homelab server 24/7, but couldn't find any cards supporting vdsl nor cable Or do you mean just as a wan connection/router? In that case... Sure, you can do that. I just don't see the value in that, personally.

jcalvinowens 3y ago
I don't care about the L2 interface. I imagine I could twist my ISPs arm and spend a bunch of money to end up with the fiber line directly connected to a card in my Linux box... but why? The ISP's upstream equipment is just as vulnerable as a modem, and there's a lot more of it. That's not the point for me. When I had DSL (and later DOCSIS), I just bought my own modems that weren't routers, and used ethernet to connect the Linux router (a raspberry pi 3 originally, yes the DSL was so slow it wasn't a bottleneck!). It was economical because Time Warner charged me something like $5/month to use their modem. There's a lot of reasons I like having a Linux router, a short list: * I have 10G internet from Sonic, in 2020 building a small Linux machine with ixgbe cards was cheaper than any commercially available 10G router with as many ports as I needed (4+). I get line rate through it, no problem. * It runs an open source NAT implementation that is actually correct (although this is less of a problem with commercial routers now than it was back in the day...). Sadly, I don't have IPv6, but the same argument would apply there. * I can run whatever DHCP server implementation I want. * No web GUIs: I SSH to the thing and write config files. * If it blows up, it's just Linux, and all the config files are in git: any machine will do, I don't have to worry about some commercial product disappearing and forcing me to waste an afternoon reinventing the wheel. * I can build and run recent vanilla kernels with all the hardening options enabled. A Linux router spends 99% of its time in the kernel. * The machine is actually fast enough to scan 10G traffic at line rate in software when I want to do that (it's doing all the routing in software, after all). It's really easy, I'd estimate I spend 1-2 hours a year maintaining it.

by ffsm8 3y ago

jcalvinowens 3y ago

I don't care about the L2 interface. I imagine I could twist my ISPs arm and spend a bunch of money to end up with the fiber line directly connected to a card in my Linux box... but why? The ISP's upstream equipment is just as vulnerable as a modem, and there's a lot more of it. That's not the point for me. When I had DSL (and later DOCSIS), I just bought my own modems that weren't routers, and used ethernet to connect the Linux router (a raspberry pi 3 originally, yes the DSL was so slow it wasn't a bottleneck!). It was economical because Time Warner charged me something like $5/month to use their modem. There's a lot of reasons I like having a Linux router, a short list: * I have 10G internet from Sonic, in 2020 building a small Linux machine with ixgbe cards was cheaper than any commercially available 10G router with as many ports as I needed (4+). I get line rate through it, no problem. * It runs an open source NAT implementation that is actually correct (although this is less of a problem with commercial routers now than it was back in the day...). Sadly, I don't have IPv6, but the same argument would apply there. * I can run whatever DHCP server implementation I want. * No web GUIs: I SSH to the thing and write config files. * If it blows up, it's just Linux, and all the config files are in git: any machine will do, I don't have to worry about some commercial product disappearing and forcing me to waste an afternoon reinventing the wheel. * I can build and run recent vanilla kernels with all the hardening options enabled. A Linux router spends 99% of its time in the kernel. * The machine is actually fast enough to scan 10G traffic at line rate in software when I want to do that (it's doing all the routing in software, after all). It's really easy, I'd estimate I spend 1-2 hours a year maintaining it.