On Wed, Nov 27, 2019 at 12:36 PM Dale <[email protected]> wrote: > > I've found that asking here is best. If it wasn't for my post here, I > would have stuck with Linksys because it is what I've used in the past. > Thing is, a post here lead me to a better product, even tho it wasn't a > Linksys product. It's one reason I post questions here quite often. I > get more info from here than I could likely ever find elsewhere because > most people here post about their own experience not some theory. You > should know, you post about yours quite often and it's generally a good > idea to give it some weight when deciding something. >
Linksys had that one router eons ago that was capable of running linux (might have run it out of the box - I forget). Back in the day there weren't many options and they were one of the better ones. They only got worse, and a lot of much better options have come out since then. LOTS of better options. There are ARM-based PCs designed to run pfsense and so on with multiple NICs. Buffalo makes routers with DD-WRT pre-installed, and while I'd double check in the past they could all be trivially flashed to OpenWRT. I'd also seriously consider Ubiquiti. An ER-X can be found in the $60 range and supports routing at gigabit speeds. It runs linux already out of the box with ssh/etc and a CLI, or a nice web GUI. It looks like it isn't hard to flash OpenWRT on it as well though there seem to be some caveats (disclaimer: I've never tried it). There are a couple of good options. I'd seriously consider using something that does what you want out of the box before going the OpenWRT route. I don't think EdgeOS is actually FOSS, but it is largely built on FOSS, so if it does what you want out of the box and is easy to maintain that is a win, and if at any point it doesn't get support you can then go the OpenWRT route. That said, I've run a router on OpenWRT for ages as well. I think that is a bit more work without much gain, but you can do it. Oh, one thing I would avoid doing is running a bazillion services on your router. Yes, if it is a linux/bsd box you can run whatever you want on it. Yes, a lot of that stuff is already packaged and easy to install. Just consider why you have a firewall in the first place (ie another layer of isolation), and that this is likely a device with minimum CPU/RAM/etc and whether you REALLY want to be hosting all this stuff on a box that is a serious PITA to backup/image or rescue if it doesn't boot up right. Generally I don't host anything on a router that isn't directly related to its mission, so that could include updating a dynamic DNS address, serving DHCP, or maybe serving DNS. I've tried running OpenVPN and such on them and have found performance generally suffers for it. -- Rich
