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After trying all of the consumer routers and even Ubiquity Unifi, I finally settled on RouterBoard. Better performance/price ratio compared to even Ubiquity, with fine grained control over how it operates. Can be setup with a desktop application or a direct web interface. Rock solid setup and operation. This one is basically a wireless router, so it can be configured as your main router. But at just about $120, it is inexpensive enough to be configured and used for additional wireless access points spread across the house.

If you don't mind the command line interface my I suggest this for not less

>Mikrotik RB2011

A router so good, they can't label the port numbers right?

Mikrotik has cheap ones too, that work great.

http://routerboard.com/RB750GL.

mikrotik 2011 -- nuf said

mikrotik make routerboard routers, so that would be RB2011

The RB2011Ui is a low cost multi port device series. Designed for indoor use, and available in many different cases, with a multitude of options.

The RB2011 is powered by RouterOS, a fully featured routing operating system which has been continuously improved for fifteen years. Dynamic routing, hotspot, firewall, MPLS, VPN, advanced quality of service, load balancing and bonding, real-time configuration and monitoring - just a few of the vast number of features supported by RouterOS.

RouterBOARD 2011UiAS-2HnD has most features and interfaces from all our Wireless routers. It’s powered by the new Atheros 600MHz 74K MIPS network processor, has 128MB RAM, five Gigabit LAN ports, five Fast Ethernet LAN ports and SFP cage (SFP module not included!). Also, it features powerful 1000mW dual chain 2.4Ghz (2312-2732MHz depending on country regulations) 802.11bgn wireless AP, RJ45 serial port, microUSB port and RouterOS L5 license, as well as desktop case with power supply, two 4dBi Omni antennas and LCD panel- all this for only $129!

Tested and recommended to use with MikroTik SFP modules: S-85DLC05D, S-31DLC20D and S-35/53LC20D (not included)

RouterBOARD 2011UAS-2HnD-IN comes with desktop enclosure, LCD panel and power supply.

Wall mount kit (product code RBWMK) for network closet is available for purchase as an optional accessory.
The RB2011Ui also has passive PoE output capability on the last port (ETH10), this means you can power another device just by connecting it over regular Ethernet cable

seriously, minimum feature set? it has it's own fucking LCD!

http://routerboard.com/RB951G-... That's what I use. It routes to 5 separate ports, meaning you can have a second WAP for guests on a completely firewalled / routed port, even on a different IP address. It's able to act as a VPN endpoint. Used to do all the sysadmin / netadmin stuff for an ISP, running completely on mikrotik stuff. It worked well, even in really rough conditions. I highly recommend it.

I would rather see you utilize one of the newer Single Board Computer routers from a vendor like Mikrotik rather than spend far too much money for a Cisco ASA or SoHo solution.

As an enthusiast I would recommend the Routerboard CRS series for price and punch. It will provide the OP with all of the features he requested and a ton more that CISCO would charge a licensing fee for. The base cost will be around $149.00 for a CRS with 8 1gbp Ethernet Ports, a Gbit SFP cage, and integrated 802.11N MIMIO interfaces. http://routerboard.com/CRS109-...

Wanna build your own, you can add 802.11AC to any of thier base baords and chuck it in an enclosure for rock bottom prices. -- http://routerboard.com/R11e-5H... .

It supports Client and Server modes for IPSEC, OVPN, PPTP, L2TP, VPLS,GRE,SSTP and those are off the top of my head.

I'm not a salesman, just a nerd.

Casey Annis

P.S. If you go with Mikrotik, I'd be happy to do a TeamViewer session with you and get you started.

I would rather see you utilize one of the newer Single Board Computer routers from a vendor like Mikrotik rather than spend far too much money for a Cisco ASA or SoHo solution.

As an enthusiast I would recommend the Routerboard CRS series for price and punch. It will provide the OP with all of the features he requested and a ton more that CISCO would charge a licensing fee for. The base cost will be around $149.00 for a CRS with 8 1gbp Ethernet Ports, a Gbit SFP cage, and integrated 802.11N MIMIO interfaces. http://routerboard.com/CRS109-...

Wanna build your own, you can add 802.11AC to any of thier base baords and chuck it in an enclosure for rock bottom prices. -- http://routerboard.com/R11e-5H... .

It supports Client and Server modes for IPSEC, OVPN, PPTP, L2TP, VPLS,GRE,SSTP and those are off the top of my head.

I'm not a salesman, just a nerd.

Casey Annis

P.S. If you go with Mikrotik, I'd be happy to do a TeamViewer session with you and get you started.

I use Mikrotiks for just about everything nowadays. I haven't really found any situation that it couldn't do the function I required, even when it was something as complex as L7 regexing on a URL to force specific requests into a different priority queue.

http://routerboard.com/RB951G-...

I have this exact router, and it replaced a failing WRT54G. I'm happy with it, but I'm not doing anything very complicated with it. Maybe a couple of simple queues.

I prefer the command line, but the Mikrotik seems to want people to use 'Webfig' or Winbox. Go with the command line. Some of the GUI stuff seems ambiguously labeled.

Also, as other people have commented, Mirkotik is not very big on documentation. They have a wiki that appears to have documentation for one or two major versions back, which pops up unhelpfully in Google searches. All the better to lead you astray.

The radio in the RB951G-2HND is awesome. The USB port is only supposed to output about 500mV, but I'm running a Raspberry Pi off of it with no issues.

I've moved over to a Mikrotik RB2011 series device and I have to say I'm loving it. Has all the features I need, and even though the hardware is 3 years old at this stage, it's still alot faster than the older WRT devices. Interface and command line are a little whacky, and hard to get used to, but once you do, you'll never go back. http://routerboard.com/RB2011U...

I use Mikrotiks for just about everything nowadays. I haven't really found any situation that it couldn't do the function I required, even when it was something as complex as L7 regexing on a URL to force specific requests into a different priority queue.

http://routerboard.com/RB951G-...

Can anyone recommend a SOHO-level router that properly supports IPv6?

If you understand networks and are not afraid to setup your own router from scratch, i recommend mikrotik router boards. For home use, i'd use something like RB951G-2HnD

I've had really good luck with my RB2011UAS-2HND-IN from Mikrotik. It's pretty easy to configure queues by interface, all the way down to tagging the packets and throttling down to individual TCP/UDP ports.

Costs slightly more than a cheap home router, but you have something pretty sturdy and extremely flexible to work with.

I recently got a Microtik router running RouterOS, and I have to say I love it functionality at it's price point. Even supports BGP if you are that way inclined. My DSL was annoying me, so I turned it to bridged mode, and now the new router does everything else. NAT seems faster, with pings being 3ms quicker which I was astonished at. My other idea was an old desktop running linux, but I worked out the pricing for hardware vs electricity. And within a year (in Ireland) I am going to save money with the Microtik router. The router uses about 7W fully loaded, whereas my desktop would be churning 250 watts fully loaded... This is my one: http://routerboard.com/RB2011UAS-2HnD-IN

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned them yet, but they make damn good gear and very reasonable prices.
There is more of a learning curve to set them up but you can get a router (not just NAT, but with OSPF,BGP, RIP,etc) starting around $40.

I've gone through quite a bit of business grade IT gear, and their interface is still one of my favorites.
I had spent a solid 2-3 days trying to get a port mirroring into a vlan working correctly with a couple of netgear/hp/ciscoSMB switches, but it took me less than 5 minutes with a RB250G (~$40). Define virtual interface, in, out and done.

http://routerboard.com/RB951-2n

If I had not just purchased a WNR3500v2 to run DD-WRT/Tomato, I would have purchased the following:

http://routerboard.com/RB2011UAS-2HnD-IN

I would go Mikrotik before I would try a rasberry pi. For about the same price you get 5 ethernet ports and 802.11n in a low power, tiny package.

I have a 7.5 mile link. I have a 60ft tower I got for beer, yes beer but I had to take it down and set it up myself. My setup is a RB411AH http://routerboard.com/RB411AH with an XR2 802.11b/g 600 MW mini-PCI card and your standard 2.4GHz 24dBi parabolic grid type antenna and an enclosure for the routerbord. This is a little overkill but it works well. You can get some much cheaper all in one units now like http://www.ubnt.com/airmax#airgrid and probably be better off. I did have to work with the wisp for about 2 years to get all the bugs worked out.

Note: It wasn't me it was them but they worked with me and it's much better.... Granted my only other choice was Satellite but hell no I'm a gamer.

Check this out: http://routerboard.com/RB951-2n

You can get them for less then $45 online and they run a customized linux kernel. These are powerfull little routers.

These look good, http://routerboard.com/RB951-2n, and are under $45.

I've always been having troubles with Linksys. I was amazed a "reputable" company like Cisco would manage to position their low end product line at the very bottom of the low end SOHO market. But they did. And now I can't even trust them for the mid-level stuff. I'm now getting ethernet handoffs from upstream, and there are plenty of other choices like these, or just build it yourself (I have one such router working now in a data center to satisfy IPv6 needs to see a router).

There is also Mikrotik http://www.routerboard.com/

Actually these days you don't even have to go the 493-plus-case route, you can use an RB751 - cheap at $60, with a 1-watt transmitter and already in an enclosure with antennas.

The mikrotik hotspots don't natively do scheduled hotspot times, but the scripting engine is pretty robust and it wouldn't be hard to set up a script that enables and disables it at specified times using the scheduler.

I've used MikroTik hardware in the past to build wifi hotspots for customers. It's pretty easy to use, very friendly command line. You want something like this in an enclosure something like this. They're reasonably robust, and once configured properly, will do what you want (and a whole lot more should you want to change the setup in future) for a good long time.

1: go read smallnetbuilder and decide for yourself.

2: Mikrotik probably has something you'd be happy with for not a lot of money.

Mikrotik is cheap and easy to configuire. I do not believe you can get better!
If you are really "up for it" try an RB1000
Glenn.

I've used Mikrotik Routerboards for years and have been very happy with them. They're very flexible, relatively cheap, and I've not had any issues with reliability. I don't think they run anything like DD-WRT, but their supplied OS is very powerful. Has ssh login for admin and a Cisco IOS like interface.

The following RB435G should fit your needs:

3 x GigE ports
3 x miniPCI slots for wireless (R52nM for 802.11n)
DynDNS Updates: [Yes]
DHCP Sever with Option 66: [Yes]
Static IP based on MAC: [Yes]
Port forwarding: [Yes]
QoS support: [Yes]

1: go read smallnetbuilder and decide for yourself.

2: Mikrotik probably has something you'd be happy with for not a lot of money.

I have been using dd-wrt/tomato for years and I agree with some of the other posters, that development is nearly at a standstill.

IMHO, you should switch to a different platform - MikroTik!

The software is *way* more powerful than dd-wrt, has been more stable and performed exceptionally for me. I must admit, there is a bit of a learning curve but there is a lot of guides out there now and they have added a windows-based GUI, as well as significantly improved their web interface, so most basic stuff is point and click now. You can do some really powerful stuff that you would have to shell out big bucks for a cisco or the like.

They have just released a new model that supports 802.11n, using a internal diversified/MIMO antenna that transmit up to 1 Watt! (Most AP's use a 10th of that)
All for only $59! They make the hardware and the software, so you know all of the drivers are going to work.
http://routerboard.com/RB751U-2HnD

You can do stuff like make a separate SSID for guests (without a password), put it on a separate subnet to isolate it from your home network, setup strict firewall restrictions based on bandwith/port/packet shaping rules so they can't run bit-torrent and suck up all your bandwith,etc.

------
You could also buy a 802.11n router, turn off the router mode (disable DHCP) and just use it as an access point. Boom - you get all of the features of dd-wrt (by still using the old model for routing) but use the new one for wireless access. I've also done that for a number of years and it works great.

I don't know about the firmware but I went through a linksys router every 2-3 months on average - never longer than 9 months. D-Link didn't fair much better, Belkin was the same - couldn't handle the load.

I'd HIGHLY recommend http://www.routerboard.com/ - they're more expensive, ugly, and you need to build them yourself. With all that comes the most power, stability, and simple upgrade path combined with diagnostic firmware designed for ISPs for when something is causing trouble on your network. We were having all kinds of trouble with our internet, even after we unplugged our D-Link router. Our ISP sent us one of these, worked better than anything I've ever had before. We were able to figure out that it was a bad WAN port on our D-Link which was screwing up our radio transmitter (which is why it was still borked after removing the router from the equation)

http://routerboard.com/RB750

Small, cheap, highly configurable.
It has 5 ports that you can configure as wans or link them together as lans. There is also a gigabit version available.

You can do everything on this as you would on a homebrewed freebsd solution, but with a nice gui or an optimized cli.

www.routerboard.com, www.mikrotik.com. Their RouterOS is very similar to what other companies do for specific applications. They were founded in 95 and produced their first hardware products in 02. http://www.routerboard.com/about.html

I know with only 30 end users getting the funds to do this can be a challenge....It was for use (local council) until literally every time our HVAC systems would draw extra because of heat or cold, the whole phase would trip out...Thus we would have a mad panic to the DC to shutdown servers manually! Finally got a electrician (big hint here, get one familiar with Datacentres!) who looked at all three phases of power coming into our building. The first thing that we did (after a facepalm of the original setup) was to load balance ALL the power coming in, and moved the Datacentre power to a different phase than the HVAC - a no brainer, but no one before me really had thought of this! The second phase of what we did, was to run our own 3 phases right from the main switchboard into the Datacentre with the main breakers in the Datacentre, then a couple of sub-panels.We now have our Datacentre with a North/South power distribution feeding two Liebert UPS's that in turn, feed PDU's. So if we loose one phase, things will "scream" and email off alerts - but things will stay up. We still (because of the age of our first UPS) need a physical server connected to the UPS via serial, but the newer one has a web card in it. I have a script that if both UPS end up on battery mode, a graceful suspend of the VM's starts, with our exchange and DC's being the last to suspend. We happen to be a Windows shop, with a HP C7000 blade enclosure that is our VMware farm, connected to HP EVA 4100 which the two SAN switches have up to 96 hours of write cache. The other thing that I am looking at on its own small UPS is a MikroTik 411u with a prepaid 3G to give us independent source of SMS's. There is little point of having a SMS server that is going to be shutdown because it is on UPS. The key thing to remember about UPS (as far as I am concerned) - is that they are not a replacement for mains power. The suggestions for a generator are interesting given the fact that you only have 30 end users, the expense, maintenance of them would make them cost prohibitive tive in your environment. But 30 minutes to bring up a DC?

Why the hell is Cisco still in business, again?

I totally agree with the above. Sadly, the ONLY piece of Cisco Kit that we have is 5000 Series ASA - that our ISP manages for us (as part of our services from them) that we only use as a VPN concentrator. Licensing is, well, confusing to say the least...paying annual maintenance on it, DOES NOT allow you to get upgrades to firmware or the propitiatory Cisco VPN client (no x64 Windows 7 client yet - if ever!!!). Network is fully equipped with HP Procurve Switches, which not only have a lifetime warranty, but firmware upgrades at no extra levels of support. Our core router is an http://routerboard.com/pricelist.php?showProduct=57 which (and we sadly have static routing - but that is another story) I have just started at looking at the whole potential of it after a year in service.

I believe you may be onto something that would suit my needs for this Wireless ISP perfectly.

Do you know of any commodity TCAM hardware?

Maybe i can run RTLinuxFree on it?

http://www.rtlinuxfree.com/

and then i could put XORP on top of it

http://www.xorp.org/

or... i answered my own question...

intel xscale cpus and powerpc based routing platforms (most single board computers) are all i really need.

http://gateworks.com/
http://routerboard.com/
http://www.adiengineering.com/

RB1000 from Mikrotik supports 400,000 pps and 4 gigabit ports for $700

Take that Cisco

Take a look at the Routerboard 750 and 750G, they're great routers and once you see the flexibility of configuration you won't want to go back to off the shelf routers.

Take a look at the Routerboard 750 and 750G, they're great routers and once you see the flexibility of configuration you won't want to go back to off the shelf routers.

There are also cheap alternatives based on 680MHz MIPS CPU (all overclockable to 800MHz):

RouterStation Pro - 128MB RAM,16MB flash,4xGb ethernet,USB 2.0
Mikrotik RoutBoard RB450G - 256MB RAM,512MB Flash,microSD card slot,5x Gb ethernet (for hdd you can use some cheap Gb AoE box like Welland)
Mikrotik RoutBoard RB433AH - 128RAM,64MB Flash,microSD card slot,3x 10/100 ethernet, 3x microPCI

All can run OpenWRT or Debian.

There are also cheap alternatives based on 680MHz MIPS CPU (all overclockable to 800MHz):

RouterStation Pro - 128MB RAM,16MB flash,4xGb ethernet,USB 2.0
Mikrotik RoutBoard RB450G - 256MB RAM,512MB Flash,microSD card slot,5x Gb ethernet (for hdd you can use some cheap Gb AoE box like Welland)
Mikrotik RoutBoard RB433AH - 128RAM,64MB Flash,microSD card slot,3x 10/100 ethernet, 3x microPCI

All can run OpenWRT or Debian.

Looking forward to IP6 also (though I'll have to get rid of my $100 cheap router for a "real" one)

My router was only $100 plus $50 shipping(4U computer) plus $40 for the OS, but could have been only $100 and done the same in a smaller space(routerboard.com). It has BGP, OSPF, RIP, IPv6, Bandwidth Queues, NAT, and more.

What I wonder, though, is whether there's a middle ground: a "pro-sumer" router. Maybe somebody has got some suggestions.

Here's two: Soekris, Mikrotik/Routerboard.

I have DSL and cable. I also have a D-Link DL604 load balancing router. It sucks.

The router seems to think that as long as the physical ethernet connection is up, the provider is up. It tends not to detect network failure. There are ways to set up a periodic monitor of some host to detect if the network is up, but it does not seem to work properly.

What I want from this thing is:
Lock SMTP to one port and thus one provider. My AT&T DSL SMTP server will not accept mail from my Comcast account. (this is correct behavior for anti-spam). The DL 604 does this correctly.

I want the router to send any new connection for a naive (not currently in routing table) external network to both providers. I want it to measure the response time ( over a number of packets ) and then lock the route to the network which provides the best performance. It can periodically re-test the routes - perhaps every 5 minutes or so. This should address the problem of non-neutral peering between various providers. It is not always true that the higher bandwidth cable connection is the best connection to where I want to go. If I am accessing a client's machine who is on AT&T DSL, my DSL connection may be faster than my cable connection. I want the router to deeply inspect the traffic and be able to detect if a session breaks on a particular WAN port, and try the other. I also want it to quickly recognize when all sessions on a particular WAN port break and switch to the alternate port, while testing the original port.

I want built-in diagnostics that can show me how often a provider drops the ball, shiny graphs of bandwidth and latency etc. It would be cool if the router would allow me to see what the instant connection graph between my LAN and external networks looks like. ( which of my hosts connect to which external domains at the moment ).

I would like to be able to see graphics of IP address / port scans.

I want the router to be able to do some intrusion prevention, particularly if no one is using my network at the moment - someone tries to scan - shut the thing off for a while. ( do I care if I DOS myself if I am not using the net? NO! )

There is a hardware provider http://www.routerboard.com/ that can provide multi-wan multi-lan and wireless router hardware for cheap. They also have software but nothing that does all the tricks I want...

Coders, here's a base spec, send some bits!

OZ

I would recommend a Mikrotik, fairly cheap for all the options you get on then. I got one of the 450 models, and the board, case, and power supply will hit you for around ~100. It has a nice GUI interface for configuring everything.

Mikrotik Website
Router Boards

Yeah, WRAP boards are great liitle platforms, and you can run a variety of open source stuff on them. I also like the RouterBoards running Mikrotik RouterOS; awesome affordable, extremely flexible platform.

Check it: http://www.routerboard.com/products.html
http://www.mikrotik.com/

Fun stuff! I've got a bunch deployed as firewalls, VPN appliances, and Access Points. Currently experimenting with dual radio access points (900mhz or 5.8ghz for backhaul & 2.4ghz for local hotspot)

I'm using an old Cobalt Qube2 as a router, proxy, and to run bittorrent clients. With a 250MHz MIPS Cpu, 32k 1st level caches, no 2nd level cache and a 32bit memory bus, this thing should be comparable in speed to the board you suggested, but it feels extremely slow with anything but the most trivial tasks by todays standards. It does use only 10-15W of power, and with 256MB Ram there's no paging at all, but the normal python based bt client is actually CPU-limited at about 300kB/s. Can anyone suggest a fast bittorent client that is comparable to btlaunchmanycurses and runs on a linux text console?

If you can still get one, meshcubes were sold as a kit for EUR 200 each, and at least had a 400MHz CPU. routerboard also has some products with 400MHz CPUs. If you have a slightly larger power and space budget, a VIA EPIA baord with 533MHz may be an interesting option, and will be significantly faster than any of the aforementioned embedded CPUs, but still slow by today's standards.

The Routerboard 200 series might work for you - they are CPU-limited like the Soekris boards, but have onboard USB and IDE (though it's the 44-pin laptop-style IDE port). If you're going for crazy paranoid reliability, you can boot from a CompactFlash drive. The 230s also have a couple of PCMCIA slots, so you could even conceivably go wireless with it. There's one SO-DIMM RAM slot on the bottom, miniPCI, and even a "regular" PCI slot (though you can't use both at once). Aside from the lack of monitor and keyboard ports, it's damn near a full-blown usable computer (and between the serial and USB ports, you can work around most of those problems).

If you're really only planning to use it as a Samba server, CPU won't be the limiting factor in all likelihood. Hard drive speed will probably be the big choke point. For power consumption, it's the same deal - the hard drive will probably use more juice than the rest of the system put together. Using a slower laptop-style drive will help that, but not too much.

You can order them in the States from WISP-Router. Make sure to get the 200 series, not the 500 series, which has more CPU but almost none of the other extras (it has a miniPCI slot and that's basically it).

I mean, nobody has ever built a small low-powered PC based on a Geode chip before...

The only thing that's really novel about this is the integrated video, and having some (possibly lobotomized version of) Windows pre-installed. Otherwise, this isn't exactly a remarkable technological development.

Also seconding the "how could they make this and not include a display" question. The boards I cited above are intended for embedded development, and I've never used a monitor on any of them. (I've got probably fifty of them, all running various customized Linux and BSD distributions, scattered over four counties in my network. They're intended to be used that way, which is why they don't even have a VGA port.)

Seriously, once you add a monitor, you're pretty close to low-end Dell pricing, which gives you a computer with roughly 20 times the raw horsepower, and a lot more versatility, so I suppose they're marketing this to the "omg computers are scary" crowd. Best of luck on that. I'd like to think at this point the American public is smarter than this, but I'm probably setting myself up for another disappointment.

Open source can change some of those things, but as far as hardware goes you still need someone willing to put up considerable amounts of money for manufacturing.

Let me provide some suggestions. I work with F/OSS development for network security and wireless applications, and have spent a few years working with low-cost embedded systems that support Linux. With a Linux kernel and OS in a small box, there's not much you can't do per amateur/wireless development.

My current favorite foundation is:

o RouterBoard from Mikrotik of Latvia. Pentium 233/266 performance, very low cost ($300ish), dual PCMCIA slots, dual Ethernet (in one of the two models), microPCI slot (wonderful!), and compactflash slot. Hardware watchdog and other goodies built in are things normally found on much more expensive embedded system boards.

o IBM/Hitachi Microdrive: My base development systems runs with a 1 GB Microdrive with Debian on it, though I've got a 4 GB setup with Gentoo and use the 370 MB version for production loads. Routerboard has a Debian developers kit available for download on the site, including watchdog control. Avoid compactflash/CF (Microdrive fits the CF profile but is an actual spinning device) unless you're certain you're going to have minimal writes over time, as they will eventually cease to write and become somewhat worthless (in my experience, low-write use lasts about one year).

o Debian or Gentoo for development environment: there are some embedded distributions out there but they're intended for when you're ready to reduce to your final low-profile image. Both these distros give you a good amount of control over what is going into your system. Embedded Gentoo will be nice eventually (with cross-compile support) but isn't there yet.

o Python: Not to start any language wars (or distro wars per above), but Python is a great place for amateur developers to work in. Frameworks like Twisted allow you to focus on your code and build upon the networking smarts of others. I haven't tried yet, but I keep eyeballing Shtoom for an amateur project as well.

*scoove*

The OpenBrick costs EUR 300 to 400, while you can get a Soekris for US $135 to $240 depending on the model. The Soekris boards have RAM included (AFAIK, OpenBrick and VIA boards don't), and the optional cases are cheap, so they're not as expensive as they seem.

The WRAP and RouterBoard are the only things I've seen which are comparable to Soekrises in terms of features and price.

Using old machines as APs is all well and good, if you have plenty of power and a clean environment. PCs have cooling fans which suck in dust, moisture, and small critters. They also consume a good bit of power, which is an issue if you're running from generators or simply over a very long chain of extension cords.

You're reinventing the wheel here. Building your own kernel with all the features needed to become an AP is simply replicating all the effort expended by the AP vendors. There are also prebuilt configurations (third-party firmwares) for a lot of APs.

Purpose-built APs are smaller and lighter, which makes them easy to nail into trees or whatever for mounting. They're easy to stuff into ziplock bags for weather resistance, because they don't need much cooling. The software is already built.

If you're still interested in building your own equipment, look into hardware from Soekris Engineering and Mikrotik. Hardware that's designed for embedded operation has nice things like serial configuration (ComBIOS), onboard CF slots, simple power supply requirements, and low heat generation. Most such boards also have general purpose I/O lines that you can use for things like door sensors, thermal management, status lights, etc.

This sbc works rather nice. Cheapest one I have found with all the great features it has.

http://www.routerboard.com