I can second Dan's recommendation: I bought one of their 24-port wifi-enabled
router/switches[1] for $200 last year from one of Newegg's fly-by-night
affiliates to cover my home "production" network and lab needs, and have been
very pleased so far. Management is possible via a Windows-only thick client
(never used it), a web UI (unremarkable but full-featured), and command line
accessible via telnet (really?) and SSH.
I also agree with Dan, though, in that RouterOS is a Beast of a Different
Stripe — it bears little resemblance to LARTC or Cisco (or even Adtran; no, not
the "IOS-look-alike" Adtrans, you philistine! ;-)) — but I've found the
community around it to be mature enough that a reasonable "translation matrix"
exists in Google's indices of the forums. ("How do I get functionality like
'iptraf'?" "Oh, you want '/tool torch ...'")
YMMV,
-sth
[1]http://routerboard.com/CRS125-24G-1S-2HnD-IN
sam hooker | [email protected] | http://www.noiseplant.com
"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."
—Thomas Edison
On Aug 16, 2014, at 14:33, Dan Brisson <[email protected]> wrote:
> I would look at Mikrotik routers: http://routerboard.com
>
> RouterOS takes a little bit to get used to, but it does a million things.
>
> -dan
>
>
> Dan Brisson
> Network Engineer
> University of Vermont
> (Ph) 802.656.8111
> [email protected]
>
> On 8/16/14, 2:16 PM, Richard Lawrence wrote:
>> Dear VAGUErs,
>>
>> I am overdue for a replacement of my home wi-fi router. I have avoided
>> doing this because I would really like to have a device I control and
>> can trust...and that seems like a very small needle to find in the very
>> large haystack of home router options. So I'm wondering if someone on
>> this list has a recommendation.
>>
>> Ideally, what I'd like is a dedicated device that is more or less plug
>> and play, but that can be fully configured, troubleshot(?), and managed
>> from a terminal if need be, preferably running some sort of *nix, and
>> preferably with a replaceable OS. The situation I most want to avoid is
>> the one I'm in now: I have a crappy router with no way to manage it
>> except via an afterthought web interface, which provides limited
>> configurability and very little information about what's happening when
>> something goes wrong.
>>
>> I had a Raspberry Pi set up as a router for a while, which worked well
>> and was a breath of fresh air as far as configurability and management
>> goes, but the problem was that it would chew through SD cards. Running
>> a general purpose OS on the RPi apparently uses the filesystem enough
>> that it corrupts the SD card within a month or so if you leave it on
>> 24/7. A device that runs at least enough *nix to provide full
>> management over SSH, but is more reliable and suited for always-on use
>> as a router, would be perfect.
>>
>> I like the idea of using a plug computer as a router that could also run
>> various services (e.g. Tor, a firewall, a home web server), along the
>> lines of the FreedomBox [1]. But I haven't been able to find something
>> that is past the proof-of-concept stage and has been shown to actually
>> work as a dedicated device.
>>
>> Any ideas? Or am I asking to have my cake and eat it too?
>>
>> [1] http://freedomboxfoundation.org/
>>
