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Low Cost Routers with 100Mbps WAN Ports?
Ed asks: "I am getting ready to move into a dorm at Kent State, and they have a 100Mbps port in the room. They allow routers, and switches to connect more than 1 PC, however every router I see at the consumer level has a 10Mbps WAN port. I would really prefer not to waste having a 100BaseTX port on a 10Mbps router. Does anyone make a semi-low cost router with a 100Mbps WAN port?"
If you can demonstrate that your bandwidth to the Internet is greater than about 800 KB/s, I will personally give you a cookie.
Don't waste your money on an expensive router with a 100 Mbps uplink port unless you can take advantage of it somehow.
Build it yourself out of an old box you (or a friend) have lying around. Buy two $10 10/100 cards and a cheap 10/100 switch. Besides, it's more fun that way and you might learn something.
Sure you really need a router?
Maybe you need a switch.... a hub.... you've got 3 PCs and a single Ethernet port.
Or, maybe, you really want a router. This means creating a subnet and putting a static into THEIR router to allow replies to get back to you. Unlikely, but possible (lots of admin overhead for the dorm's net admin, but anyways). In that case, what about a Linux/xBSD with 2 or more Fast Ethernets? That's gonna cost you MUCH less than anything Cisco sells (and not only Cisco)
Vacuum cleaners suck. Kings rule.
Are you worrying about security on the Lan at Kent State? I'm just curious -- there would be no real reason to have one (firewall/nat/etc) other than to keep people from messing with your computers. Is it a requirement for a 1/1 address per port in the dorm?
I would say that there are probably some pretty high end stuff you could do this with, but like me, you probably don't have the money (and wouldn't invest the money) on such a solution. Most of the commercial (read: home use) cable routers/firewalls use only 10mbps (not sure if it's even full duplex) because you're never going to hit that wall.... by the time we do, you'll have to buy new equipment anyways.
I would think that a nicely equipped machine (p200 or better?) would be able to pass 100mbps full duplex quite nicely. Granted, you'd have to install linux, but I have found a nifty little diskette that can actually get you running with your own nat box in little to no time --> check out www.bbiagent.net.
Make sure you have 2 network cards that are supported, set up your network settings on the page, and whammo! You get an image of a diskette for your specific machine! I honestly think it's a world above the retail-available boxes, because of the 0-$ invested (other than old equipment...) Also, once you use this as your router, you can drop the Hard Drive/CDROM off of the machine alltogether, since it's all on the floppy! Makes for a very quiet machine (I have mine running on a pentium 200, and I barely notice the machine is on!)
Hopefully this helped....
Karnal
If they'll allow you to use a switch, why spend some more money and buy a router? These things are usually used when either you're not supposed to hook more than one computer, or when only one computer can't be connected directly to the Internet because of some authentication mechanism (PPPoE, DHCP w/ only 1 address per port, etc.)
If they allow you to grab more than one IP address, and the network is either fixed address or DHCP, go with a switch. A 100Mbps switch will set you back around 40$.
Or use one of your computer as a bridge (NAT) before the switch. But then you'll have to open it anytime you want one of the other ones to go online, unless you let it on all the time as I do... and some protocols still don't like NATted computers.
unless they only allocate one IP address per port, you should only need to get a 100Base-T switch. I've had great luck with Linksys. If they will only allocate one IP per port, then you need something similar to a Cable/DSL router. Given that I've only seen those with 10Base-T WAN ports, you might want to consider building a cheap Linux or BSD box to do the same job.
btw, shouldn't this be in the Ask Slashdot section?
Considering these standards for wireless networking: HomeRF 2.0 10 Mbps 802.11b WiFi 11 Mbps 802.11g 22 Mbps 802.11a 54 Mbps what makes you think you need a 100mb WAN link? How many computers will use this WAP?
Wow! This must be a PERSONAL letter, just for me!
You can get 750-900 kb/sec with your 10mBit router, i think this is fast enough to download all the stuff you want. Unless you want to install a server farm behing the router, a 100mBit router is really to expensive for private use...
... i've no idea what this costs, but i'm sure its a fine sum.
If you want a 100mBit wan-router, you sghoul consider the cisco 17xx series, i think that should be whats you're looking for
Perhaps you could use an old pc with 2x100mBit cards and Linux/*BSD as a router, that would be a more cheap solution, besides you could host stuff on it!
Life sucks.
Next time I should look more closely before shooting my mouth off.
The SMC Barricade (SMC7004AWBR) has a 3 port, 100Mbps switch, an 802.11 access point, a print server that provides SMB and an lpr spool, can connect to an ethernet network or use an analog modem when you move off-campus. It's around $150.
Better yet, go here and make your own decision.
Why don't you use a Linux box with a 10/100 ethernet card as your router?
Do it with an old 486 motherboard like this or this or this or this or this or this or this or.....
Hi. I'm too damn lazy to even bother doing the most basic of research. Can somebody do it for me? Thanks."
can someone please share their insight on how it's actually possible to use an old box for routing 100Mb/s? what kind of NIC's and CPU do you need for this?
my p120 with rtl8139c's can do 12Mb/s at best for forwarded connections with 2.4.9 and simple ruleset. How much would some intel or 3com NIC's help?
You can always pick up someones older PC like a Celeron 300-500 and make a Linux NAT (Network Address Translation) box out off it. Most of the consumer level dsl/cable "routers" are just simple NAT boxes done in hardware.
look around a simple nat box is easy and cheap to setup and you can decide the speed. I get 50mbs across a p200 NAT box at my work (for test environment)
#include sig.h
Wireless cards are cheap. I would simply get a wireless 802.11b card with a prism II chipset, follow the info @ this site http://www.cafwap.net/prism2ap/ and this site http://www.linuxrouter.org and you will be able to roam free without the hassels of cordes. And if you follow this guide http://www4.tomshardware.com/howto/02q1/020111/ you will also be able to contain all of this info in a small unit hidden behind the beer fridge. While your @ it you can use the linux router as an FTP server to store all of your homework so you can access them anywhere on campus.
That's just my two cents worth
Pseudocode is code to demonstrate a concept, not designed to be run. Like certain M$ software.
If you really want to get wacky, find an old 3Com Netbuilder II on Ebay. I have worked on them and I know that they support Fast Ethernet. I don't think that 3Com is putting firmware out anymore, but the latest stuff supports NAT, I'm pretty sure.
Never forget the old stuff. Most of the time, these things are just sitting around collecting dust.
Hi-Technical Excellent Taste and Flavor!
I would recommend getting a cisco catalyst 6513 switch with the following configuration:
1 cat 6513 w/redundant ps
2 supervisor2/msfc2 cards
2 switch fabric module-2 cards
4 16 port fabric enabled gig-e cards
1 network analysis module
1 ids blade
3 48 port 10/100 power over ethernet enabled blades
if you can get two ports to the campus backbone i'd recommend using both of the ports and getting the campus IT folks to provision them off of separate switches and configure hsrp for you, then you could get another 6513 configured similarly to the one above and have a good sense of redundancy. One 6513 configured as the one above is should run you >$100k. If this doesn't fall in the 'cheap' catagory you could look at getting a cisco 3550-12T switch. this guy has 12 10/100/1000 ports and comes with basic ip routing functionality. its only $10k or so i think. If that is still too expensive you could look at something like a 2621 router, which has 2 100mbps ports. With the 2621 or the 6513 solution you could also add voice modules. You could have your local teleco provision a few PRIs to your dorm and become the campus CLEC or something. If you teamed up with other students at other colleges you could put voice gateways at a bunch of colleges and use the fat pipes between them to do toll bypass and give students across the world cheap long distance. If you went with the 6500 you'd also have a permanent space heater in your dorm. If you need an even cheaper solution i'd recommend using a linux box or something of that nature, not only will it be a fun learning experience, but it will be dirt cheap. oh, and i'll give you a cookie if you try to order the 6513 with WS-X6369-THC(that's the integrated bong option....ooh...you'll want the WS-X6569-THC, that's the fabric enabled bong option).
Try OpenBSD. I an OS just begging to be used as a firewall.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
What a bunch of sarcastic a-holes you all are!
Did any of you EVER consider it might not be for WAN connectity? No you didn't did you. You all just Ass-U-Me'd that he want's to connect to some cable modem or dsl with it. You should be ashamed of your selves.
I love my SonicWall SOHO2; its one of the few NAT firewall boxes with statefull packet inspection and a 100mbps WAN port. It isn't exactly cheap though.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
I know you dont want an old PC with linux running NAT, too much work and upkeep for such a simple job.
According to the SMC web page, this has a 8 port built in switch, printserver, AND 10/100 WAN port.
We (at the school I work) have had great luck with the SMC wireless routers, and this appears to be identical (sans wireless).
We are also ordering one of the 7008ABR's because its the only one that I could find that had a 10/100 WAN port. Now the only question is whether or not it can actually keep up that that speed.
Oh, its $140 at CDWG.com
Hope it helps, and that I'm not posting too late.
Plug: http://www.dubbele.com
If you're running multiple machines off the router, then a cheap solution is to just drop another 100Mb card into one of your machines and let it route. Note that this is not a really secure solution -much safer to have a stand-alone box. But if cost is a bigger factor than security...
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I see all these posts on build it yourself, none of the suggestions seem all that easy...
You can get a first generation pentium now of any speed with ram the whole 9 yards for FREE. If you live in San Jose, I would be more than happy to let you have your choice from 10 boxes I got in the garage ranging from 486 to a P120. You come pick it up its that simple.
Next you need to add some network cards, the bay network netgears do the job nice and at $20 bucks a pop at fry's it wont hurt your pocketbook.
Finally some software to run it. I recomend BBIAgent It's small, runs on a floppy, and should do everything you need it to. Very slick web based setup and java based config utility.
As far as a hub/switch/cat5 cable, well that will still cost you money. I have a tangle of blue wire in the garage that looks like animal from the muppets if he were blue, you'd be more than welcome to help yourself.
Good Luck!
--Toq
So far, this is the only post I've seen that actually answers the original question. Go back and read it again, you idiots.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.