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Replace NAT Box with Commercial Broadband Router?

Posted by Cliff on from the if-it-ain't-broke dept.

hjf asks: "Three years ago, when I got DSL, I set up a 486 box, with 8 megs and a floppy drive to run FloppyFW. It has been through a couple hardware upgrades: 16Mb RAM for running the 2.4 kernel and a 100MBit PCI NIC for the internal network. It has a little UPS which lasts for over 60 minutes. The only downtime it has is when there's a thunderstorm and I unplug it. Besides that, it has been running flawlessly since I set it up. Lately I have been kind of seduced with this product from 3Com, and other similar to it. I know it says it can handle 253 simultaneous users and all that. My home network has 4 users, but most of us run eMule and other P2P, and as many of you know, those P2P programs can beat the crap out of your router." "For example, the default NAT table of my box wasn't enough (syslog reported TABLE FULL - DROPPING PACKET), so I made it 32768 entries and that message doesn't appear anymore. Now, what I'd like to know is, how big is that router's (or any other which does that kind of job) NAT table? Will it handle that many concurrent connections? I know I'll lose most of Linux's flexibility but I think I can live with that, but I'd surely win lots of room in the closet. So Slashdot, what's your opinion about all this?"

3 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. stick with what you've got by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whoa, you want to replace a simple, working firewall, which is open-source, understood by you, and which costs next to nothing, with a closed-source, commercial, EULA-encumbered device with arbitrary limits, unknown functionality, guaranteed to work only with Windows, but in a shiny branded box?

    Damn, if you're not a manager now, you're in the wrong line of work!

    I mean, you're seduced by this kind of crap?

    IP functions such as PPTP/PPPoE, NAT, and DHCP enhance addressing privacy and economy

    Wow! Enhanced addressing privacy! And Economy! Both in one sleek white box!

    Hacker pattern detection firewall feature automatically detects and blocks denial-of-service attacks and other common intrusions

    I can just imagine that sophisticated technology.. if packets/second exceed X, start dropping packets randomly....

  2. Huh? by jazman_777 · · Score: 5, Funny
    and as many of you know, those P2P programs can beat the crap out of your router.

    Do you mean your NICs get hot? Or does the machine start vibrating under the load?

    --
    Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
  3. Re:Absolutly not. by Wonko · · Score: 5, Informative

    Consumer grade broadband routers are notorious for causing problems, and are almost always badly underpowered. Using a PC based router to handle nat generally works much better, provided you have the know-how to set it up.

    A few months ago I replaced an aging P133, an ancient 3com 12 port 10 megabit switch (with 2 100 megabit uplink ports, woo hoo!), and an 802.11b access point with a Linksys WRT54G.

    I replaced the firmware with this. I've been very happy with it so far. I think the 200 mhz mips processor is probably a decent replacement for the P133. It takes up much less space, makes much less noise, and it's in much better condition that the old hardware it replaced. I can still ssh into it, and according to /proc/version it is running a 2.4.20 kernel.

    I think it was approximately 70 dollars well spent.