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I can't think of a system that needs no more than 4GB, but needs the extra performance of 32bit addressing space.

It would be nice to have on x86_64 embedded systems with limited memory such as these, which are commonly used for networking gear.

You can run pfSense on a small platform such as the APU2C4 from PC Engines. It draws 6W to 12W.

I bought a complete kit from here. Quite happy with it.

APU2 https://pcengines.ch/apu2c4.ht... is GigE capable with Intel NICs, Alix APU is not. Just be certain to enable HW accel on the NICs, which is off by default.

Get an APU2 for about US$144 (PSU + case + SOC) and be happy the next 10 yrs. It has a low-powered AMD x64 CPU that runs pfsense, *BSD, Linux-whatever nicely. No GPU, serial only text output, so forget the mouse point-n-click stuff.

I never understood all the complaints about power costs. If you avoid the 95+W CPUs and monster GPUs, which is easy these days, power cost really isn't a consideration.

If you're going to go that way, get an Alix APU, which is x86 without all the bloat and heat of a standard PC. It's designed for use as routers/firewalls/whatever, and runs pfSense out of the box. Also, unlike a Pi, it's actually properly designed, with real ethernet NICs, proper power conditioning, proper flash storage that doesn't shit itself every time there's a power glitch, and so on. I've got older Alix hardware that's been running for close to ten years without being touched, and that I have no expectation of needing maintenance for many more years to come.

If networking is your thing, then you want one of these instead: http://pcengines.ch/apu2.htm

It's not Intel or a stick, but PC Engine has a board that uses AMD's jaguar CPU, and had three Intel gigabit nice, mSata, supports SD booting, and had two mini pcie slots so you can add WiFi.

It's over kill for what your asking for, it's still small enough to be portable. At the board is under $150 http://www.pcengines.ch/apu2b4.htm

I dug into building my own when I wanted more control over DNS servers but didn't want to run that in a VM or have a large dedicated machine. I eventually had it take over DHCP services too.

http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.ht...

US Vendor

http://www.mini-box.com/

Works real well with BSD and it even has WiFi in the box I built.

http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.htm these things are great. more expansion options and purpose built than the little boxes you might find on amazon or similar in the same category. really just more capable in general. passive cooling, runs anything you want to put on it, dedicated serial port.. GPIO, mPCIe expansion its perfect for this 'homebrew' stuff, especially a firewall/network appliance.

I'm currently running this setup:

• System: PCEngines APU system
• Wireless adapter: COMPEX WLE900V5-23 miniPCIe 802.11ac adapter
• OS: Voyage Linux

I've been running witht his setup for about a year with excellent results. Although, if I had to do it over, I would go with a discrete 802.11ac AP instead of running it on the router, as Linux wireless support for master (AP) mode is pretty shitty.

Forgot to link http://pcengines.ch/apu.htm

I can highly recommend apu1d based system with pfSense. I've had it about 6 months now and it's been great.

I bought mine from UK based vendor LinITX.

Before that I had about 10 years Soekris net1408, which was fine until pfSense 2.00 came out since then it still worked but when you needeg to access WebGUI then it was dog-slow.

Forgot to link http://pcengines.ch/apu.htm

There's a few open source/custom hardware platforms out there geared towards custom networking equipment. Personally I use the PC Engines APU http://pcengines.ch/apu.htm It's the best router I've ever owned

Answer to #1: pfSense (http://www.pfsense.org/)
Answer to #2: pfSense (http://forum.pfsense.org/)

See, wasn't that easy?

Even though pfSense can act as a Samba server, I'd put the firewall and Samba server on separate hardware. The Alix or APU from PC Engines board makes a nice low power firewall.

I second Soekris. Their net6501 system is really nice, but kind of pricy. I just got one of these recently because it's cheaper and have been very happy with it:

http://store.netgate.com/kit-A...

Full specs:

http://pcengines.ch/apu.htm

These make nice network applicances. I just set one of these up as my new router/firewall/AP. They're pretty solid. Load your OS of choice and start having fun. For me that's Voyage Linux.

Why is custom hardware needed? Im just curious. There seem to be plenty of cheap ($100) SOC boards out there with ethernet ports. You only need one to route. Not sure what sort of hardware performance requirements the encryption and tunneling software would require, but surely one can be built for much less than $7500. Even a desktop with a bunch of 4x1GB port PCIe cards wouldn't cost a grand... its a desktop I know, but still....

How about the Alix APU1D4 combined with Pfsense and encrypted harddisk.

A sub-$100 pfsense box would be nice.

You can build a really, really nice sub-$200 pfSense box with the PC Engines apu. Quad port, gigabit, mmmm....

As others stated pfsense is excellent and *WRT runs on cheap MIPS/ARM hardware.

However, pfsense is more difficult than IPFire and the MIPS/ARM soho routers struggle with VPN (underpowered). PC Engines APU uses about ~7 watts and IPFire is developing nicely with grsecurity + PAX and they recently added Active Directory.

It results in a nice low powered reasonably priced router and a user friendly UTM.

PC Engines APU

IPFire

Netgate.com and http://www.pcengines.ch/ both have a whole line of Alix mainboards and router boards available that can run bsd monowall, or a series of liux distros... have at, dude.

Geez, what the fuck.

http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.ht... or
http://soekris.com/products.ht...

You can run a "real PC" on 5-10W, you know. No arcane boot loaders, flashing procedures with the danger of bricking your device looming over your head or obscure architectures which have you set up complicated cross-compiling environments.

Standard x86 with a serial port. It's so nice and easy.

I use one of these. Open source comaptibility doesn't get any better than x86_64. Couple with an msata ssd and an Intel AC7260 mPCIe 802.11ac card and the specs beat the hell out of any consumer router. You can use linux or FreeBSD and configure it yourself (I use Arch), or use pfsense for a more dedicated firewall solution.

The PC Engines APU board is pretty damn spiffy.

http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.htm

6"x6" board, AMD G series T40E APU 1 GHz dual core processor, 2 or 4 GB of RAM, GPIO, 2 miniPCI expres slots, SD slot, three gigabit ethernet ports, plus other features, and uses 6-12 watts of power. Depending on what board and accessories are selected It's in the $150-$250 price range.

The last time I bought a dedicated device like this, I got a PC Engines WRAP, which is similar to the boards that Soekris sells. For about £100, I got a 266MHz AMD Geode (x86) CPU, a board that could boot from a CF card, and had 3 wired sockets and 2 miniPCI slots (with an 802.11g card in one), a metal case and a couple of antennae. That was quite a few (actually, almost ten) years ago.

The first search result has a similar kit for £139, which is a bit more, but if you shop around you can probably get it for cheaper. That includes a 500MHz x86 CPU and 256MB of RAM, so it will happily run most stock *NIX distributions, or something firewall-centric like pfSense.

I actually asked a similar question on the #openbsd Freenode channel a while back and got a pretty good response. Basically, RPi is a crapshoot. It's very poorly documented and there's a lot of proprietary crud that's a pain in the neck to develop for. It's been brought up a lot on the mailing list and discussed there, so I recommend searching through it for those discussions.

I got recommended several alternatives, but the one that seemed to come up most often was Alix. I was also told they're coming out with a new model sometime early this year, so I'm waiting for that before I buy (if anyone has more info on that, I'd be happy to hear).

But you can buy better hardware that is more open right now for less money. There are lots of options for a DIY router, boards that even have card slots so you can put on your own wireless card, etc..

Alix boards, and lots of others out there both ARM and even X86 based. Plus those boards you can run a real router like pfSense or IPCop on them instead.

I'm waiting for the new Alix APU board to be available for my next firewall. I've been using an alix2d13 Alix board with pfSense and have been very happy for it. My current firewall has enough CPU power to route my full 50 mbit comcast connection, but I'd really like more RAM so I can load the pfBlocker list.

I'm using an atom cpu with several onboard intel gig-e ports.

fanless and has been pretty reliable so far. my 50mbps cable connection stays up and the 'router' has not needed rebooting in the month or two that I've been using it so far.

I've been very happy with pfSense running on a PC Engines Alix2d13 board. The board has 3 100mbit ethernet ports and 1 miniPCI slot for Wifi expansion, but I think there's limited driver support for 802.11n capable cards. I already had an Asus 802.11abgn wifi router, so I'm using that router for Wifi, and the pfSense box just as a firewall, VPN server, and a home webserver. I have dual WAN connections and use pfSense to failover from the primary connection (Comcast 50mbit) to the backup 3mbit DSL connection. Works great, and I can set up policy routes to route certain traffic across either WAN connection.

The Alix is not super powerful and is somewhat memory constrained (256MB), but I can get a Speedtest peak of 60mbit down from my Comcast connection. They are supposed to be working on a more powerful Alix successor that will have 1 or 2GB of RAM and a faster, dual core CPU. The cost is supposed to be in line with the current boards ~ $200.

I've only had this setup for a few months, but seems pretty stable, I last rebooted over 70 days ago and haven't had any problems with it.

Just to be clear, ALIX is a PC Engines product sold in the US by Netgate. There are other sources. http://pcengines.ch/alix.htm

I was interested in looking around.. how about these?

PC Engines ALIX 1D is $110
http://www.wezm.net/technical/2011/12/openwrt-on-alix/
http://www.pcengines.ch/order1.php?c=4

LyconSys MRT150N mini-vpn-router is 99 EUR on Amazon Germany
http://www.lyconsys.com/index.php/en/products/minivpnrouters
http://www.amazon.de/Mini-VPN-Router-MRT150N-WLAN-150-MBit/dp/B0040G9F8I/ref=cm_pdp_imgs_itm_title_1/279-9174569-5637012

They're called embedded systems. Maybe you've heard of them? Not free, but when you load a Linux distribution tailed for embedded systems (like this one) they're MUCH more stable than anything you can buy at any big-box store (even if you're flashing the firmware with something less retarded).

We started with some cheesy radio links and have moved up in speed over the years to where we now have a direct fiber connection to a local ISP. We are currently buying 50MB symmetrical service for data, and that is sufficient to allow widespread streaming of Netflix for our residents (we don't have access to cable TV here, but a few folks have satellite). We added VOIP phone service a few years back, which the same ISP sells us over a separate set of fibers to avoid call quality issues. We have local servers for email, community website stuff and for the VOIP service (using the excellent SIPx open source software). We use open source PFSense software running on a low-power ALIX box as our central firewall & DHCP server.

We charge $30 for Internet and $30 for phone, with unlimited domestic long distance, which includes a small margin that allows us to accumulate funds for maintenance and improvements. These prices are considerably lower than people here would pay for equivalent services, and people are pretty happy with the quality. The system is maintained by a small team of volunteer geeks, and our residents understand that we won't necessarily jump out of bed to fix a problem--we'll do the best we can, but don't guarantee 100% service levels. We don't enforce any bandwidth caps per-household, and that has not been a problem.

This kind of thing is entirely feasible, as long as you have a core group of geeks that consider it something they are interested in putting some time into. We have saved our residents many tens of thousands of dollars over the years, keeping that money circulating in our local community instead of shipping it off to some corporate behemoth. And for those of us who do the work, we generally find it an engaging and enjoyable use of our time, and find it satisfying to provide a useful service to our neighbors.

Oh, and I concur with an earlier poster--if you do it, do it wired. Provide one jack to each condo, and let the owners distribute around their rooms as they see fit. You might provide some wireless access in common spaces.

http://pcengines.ch/alix.htm
... of course, it's not going to do what you want, but there you go. :-)

No, you don't get it. This is mainly aimed at being an HTPC. What you're looking for are these and these.

If you have a rented server somewhere running a DNS server, then the usual suggestion I make is to roll your own dynamic DNS. Before somone says "but my router only supports DyDNS", there are solutions that can allow you to update your own dynamic DNS anyway -- the main trick is getting your public IP address. If you also run your own web server, it's quite simple to create a web page like "whatismyip" in PHP:

(start PHP here)
echo $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
(stop PHP here)

And from there you can make a custom shell script that checks your public IP, compares it with what your DNS server has for the entry, and then update your DNS server if needed. This doesn't need to be done at the router -- it can be done through it if necessary. If you run Bind9, look at the 'nsupdate' utility -- and of particular note, it's possible to do this dynamic DNS update via TCP rather than UDP. That way you can guarantee that the update will get there. AFAIK all of the popular DNS servers have a way of doing dynamic DNS updates such that they don't have to be done right at the router.

It's more convenient to do this at the router, though, because the router is on all the time and desktops/laptops aren't. So if you really want to also run a custom router to do the job for you, you might like the Alix hardware such as this:

http://pcengines.ch/alix2d3.htm

Debian runs nicely on the Alix hardware directly, using a kernel for a 486.

I've been very satisfied with my alix2d13 SBC running OpenWRT. A bit pricier than most routers, and you might need a separate wireless AP, but it has processing power aplenty, and the removable storage is awfully handy for hacking.

http://pcengines.ch/alix2d13.htm and a wireless minipci card of your choice (also available form the same vendor)

pick either dd-wrt or better freebsd based router oriented distros like pfsense

or get a Netgear WNDR3700, which IMO is a direct 2011 era replacement for WRT54G. Though what I found was that the built in firmware is rock solid and has QoS out of the box. doing bit-torrent full stream my Vonage VoIP and Facetime calls go through without a single hickup.

1. Buy one of these: PC Engines WRAP (1e203)
2. Install this on it: m0n0wall
3. ...
4. Profit

Seriously, though, all you have to do is hook up your wireless access point to the DMZ port and enable traffic shaping on that network interface. There are apparently fancier things you can do, but I just configure inbound/outbound bandwidth limits). Quite simple, and it's all through a friendly web GUI!

Here's the documentation (sorry, no screenshots) that describes how to configure the shaping: http://m0n0.ch/wall/list/showmsg.php?id=35/88

Have you looked at the ALIX line? Under $150 w/ case. I use them as firewalls (OpenBSD/pf), among other things. A pair of 2D13s would make a pretty nifty pf/carp load balancer/failover system, too, if you don't need gigabit ethernet.

http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm

Stick Zero shell on it and you have everything you could want.

The PC Engines ALIX series are similar to the Soekris boards, are fast and well supported by various open source routers, including hardware based crypto acceleration.
It comes in various versions with different number of lan ports and mini-pci ports to fit most needs.
http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm

Another good and cheaper replacement is the router station pro.
It does have gigE ports, unlike the ALIX and Soekris boards, and is quite affordable.
http://www.ubnt.com/rspro
Version with case here:
http://www.netgate.com/product_info.php?cPath=27_104&products_id=812

PC Engines' ALIX routers are my favorite: http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm

(no I don't work for them, I'm not even from Europe)

They have all kind of configuration options, removable storage, lots of case options, they're reliable and they're pretty fast. They run a few distros, including OpenWRT, so you can choose what your favorite Linux or BSD router distro is and have at it.

Pretty much any home router in a box that you can buy is going to be rubbish. To be fair, it is pretty impressive what you can get for $30-$50; but intense price sensitivity and competition have pretty much leveled the home router field. You can either get the (impressive for the money; but not good enough) basic model, or you can go cry.

The Ciscos and Junipers of the world will probably cut it(with the distinctly possible exception of older used ones. If you get something from the era where routing a 10Mb lan into a T1 line was Real Serious Stuff, bittorrent over a 30Mb line is going to make it cry expensive enterprise tears); but they are expensive, even used, and many of their features are probably overkill for home applications.

Your best bet might be to run m0n0wall or pfsense. Depending on your tolerance for fan noise, you can either get a basic intel atom board for ~$80 or an embedded x86 board from soekris or pcengines or similar.

That combination will be pretty featureful, quite a bit more powerful than your basic home box, and cheaper than any business box that isn't seriously antiquated.

pfSsense has a good interface and support for built in wireless if you want. It'll take up more space and use more power, but the feature set is immense. If you don't want to get something big and power hungry, you can put together a smaller ALIX box that runs pfSense too. But those are 10/100 ethernet jacks, so there's less room for growth.

IPCop is also good, I just switched to pfSense because we use it at work. And we use it at work because IPCop doesn't do multiple WAN interfaces which wouldn't really matter for home use anyways.

Although it doesn't include a switch, I greatly prefer PC Engine's ALIX routers: http://www.pcengines.ch/alix1d.htm

There are a few cases available for them and you get get quite a few interfaces/minipci combos for ethernet and wireless. Switches are cheap anyway.

http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm

No I don't work for them, I'm not even European, just a happy customer :)

Although it doesn't include a switch, I greatly prefer PC Engine's ALIX routers: http://www.pcengines.ch/alix1d.htm

There are a few cases available for them and you get get quite a few interfaces/minipci combos for ethernet and wireless. Switches are cheap anyway.

http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm

No I don't work for them, I'm not even European, just a happy customer :)

PCEngines have similar products, though cheaper and with the ability to use PoE (well, you need a "splitter").

So many replays, but I can't see the right one. Here is my configuration:

Motherboard: Alix1C (ITX board 500MHz AMD Geode processor, 256MB RAM, Alix1D is currently in production). board has two serial ports, parallel port, several USB ports, LAN, PCI, mPCI, 4 audio ports, keyboard/mice port, 44pin ATa port, and CF card slot, and other...

Power supply: 12V, 1.25A, idle consumption 5W plus 2-3W for HDD (Hitachi 30Gb 2.5" ATA HDD), pluged directly into board. See http://www.pcengines.ch/ for more info. I tested board from -10 to +50 degrees Celsius, works like a charm for two years non-stop now.

One PCI SATA controler, with two 1TB HDD, and 12V 2A + 5V 2A power supply, fanless. HDD's take about 30-35W together (haven't measured it).
I placed all that in one old ITX case, and right now I have replaced original power suppply with two fanless "brickl" PSUs. Case is ventilated with one 120mm fan, running on 5V.

Ubuntu LTS is installed, running services: Teamspeak, ftp, www, mysql (for WIKI and other things), DC hub (for local network), DC client, Open2300 meteo station software (see http://www.pljusak.hr/ and http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Open2300/WebHome ), samba, and some others.
I was just reassembling it yesterday... ( http://www.vallisaurea.net/staro/webcam/S5004006.JPG and http://www.vallisaurea.net/staro/webcam/S5004008.JPG )

My firewall currently runs M0n0wall on ALIX board and it has worked perfectly for me. This is the board I used: http://www.pcengines.ch/alix2c3.htm

Intel just released the D945GSEJT Atom board. This is not the same boards that used to older 945 chipsets. The older boards needed a fan on the chipset for it sucked up almost 20 watts!! The new board is mini-itx so it should fit in just about any case and runs on a single 12 volt coaxial plug so no need for a buly ATX PSU.

A nice review here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/Intel_D945GSEJT_with_Morex_T1610

I also use, and am a big fan of the PC Engines Alix boards: http://www.pcengines.ch/ You have several board styles to choose from. You can install Voyage Linux (Debian based and keep APT!!) on a compact flash with a simple installation (specifically for ALIX) script: http://linux.voyage.hk/

My alix, which I use as a USB music server, draws a measly 3 watts (Kill-A-Watt meter) when playing FLAC files. You can attach a low power USB hard disk for added storage if you want to run NFS.

I moved to alix 2d3 with pfSense.
http://www.pcengines.ch/alix2d3.htm and http://www.pfsense.com/

The thing can run circles around a wrt54g without sweating.

Yah 54g is great, I used it for a long long time, however 3 boxes I had always had some kind of issues with 3rd party firmwares dd-wrt, openwrt even tomato. From hanging to dropping WAN on DSL, I stayed frustrated. In due time, I figured my frustration had nothing to do with me living in my mom's basement.

pfSense + alix has been rock solid.

The best part about my alix board based router... its fully supported by lots of opensource initiatives (monowall, pfsense, zeroshell etc) and come time for N, I just replace the minipci card on it.

A full blown mini mainboard with serial, parallel, video, audio and usb ports, much more RAM and processing power, compact flash, mini-pci and pci slots, etc. plus a powerful wifi mini-pci card. It's not N, for now, but who cares? The day you need N it will just be a matter of shelling out 20-40$ to get a new mini-pci card that supports it.
Call me when these open routers' prices drop to $25. Today everything above $50 is a complete ripoff.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated in any way with that shop. I just have been a very happy customer in the past when my company needed some embedded boards and after a good search on the net we ended up purchasing some of their their old WRAP systems to develop wireless stuff and firewalls.