Powerful Linux ISP Router Distribution?

fibrewire writes "I'm building a Wireless ISP using commercial grade, low cost equipment. My main stumbling block is that I cannot find a decent open source ISP class routing distribution. Closest thing to even a decent tool is Ubiquiti's AIRControl — but even it doesn't play well with other network monitoring software. I've used Mikrotik's RouterOS for five years, but it just isn't built for what I need. I don't mind paying licensing fees, but $300K for a Cisco Universal Broadband Router is out of my budget. Has anyone seen any good open-source/cheap hardware/software systems that will scale to several thousand users?"

Comments

Are you serious, or just killing time?

[jeffmeden]

So Cisco makes billions of dollars a year selling some ungodly expensive, ungodly powerful head end router like devices (not even routers in the IP sense) and somehow you suspect a Linux distribution with the same features is going to unpack itself and be everything you want it to be? You need to tell us what the rest of your platform looks like if you expect any answers that go beyond 'any linux distribution can act like a router!'. What subscriber equipment is in use? How much user control do you need (access on/off vs. bandwidth filtering, etc.) Details, details, details.

Re:Are you serious, or just killing time?

[dave562]

And beyond that, just because a Linux box might support all of the protocols and implementations that Cisco has leveraged in their own products, it does not mean that the Linux box is going to configure itself. A lot of the reason that Cisco makes money is because they provide solutions. The solutions themselves leverage established technologies in many cases (RFCs are in the public domain), but Cisco makes them work together. It's the old discussion about Open Source vendors. They aren't making money selling people Linux because Linux is free. They are making money selling people Linux configured to perform specific tasks, and then selling support to keep the solution functioning and up to date.

Re:Are you serious, or just killing time?

[rantingkitten]

Do you need a Cisco Catalyst to handle 3 desks on a fairly slow DSL line, who aren't doing outrageous sharing between each other? No.

Sheesh. I wish someone would tell that to our clients. My company provides service to (mostly) small businesses, and half of these little five-man operations have some totally over-engineered Cisco gear acting as their network edge because some smartass, self-styled "IT Guy" told them it was the best. Surprise, he vanishes after plugging it in and collecting his fee, and now the client has all these problems with our SIP service and of course they have no idea how to manage their own equipment, and WE end up looking like jerks because our stuff won't work out of the box with whatever equipment the client has.

Could you do the 3 desk operation with a Linux machine and 4 network cards? Sure. In this example, it's cheaper to pick up a cheap hub, than to take even a salvage machine and put 4 network cards in it.

Here, though, I disagree. At the same company I mentioned, when I joined, we were a three-person operation, and we used a Linux machine with two network cards and a switch as our router. It worked great as we scaled up in staff numbers, particularly when tools like ntop and tcpdump existed to let me see when some joker was ruining it for everyone by torrenting the entire internet. If you never plan to expand, then sure, some cheap little router toy from Dlink or Linksys will do fine, but if you intend to grow, may as well do things right the first time than have to re-engineer your network down the road.

Also, a hub? Who the hell uses hubs anymore? I can't even think of a use for them these days other than packet sniffing, and an inexpensive managed switch will let you do that.

What on earth are you trying to actually do?

[sirket]

Routing and ISP's are huge topics- what are you trying to do?

The main problem with routing isn't bandwidth- anyone can pump enough 1500 or 9000 byte frames per second to fill a gigabit pipe. The problem is when you have lots of small packets. At that point, dedicated routing hardware with a high-speed TCAM becomes really important.

What kind of line cards do you need? ADSL? Ethernet? OC12?

What kind of services do you need to run? BGP? OSPF?

What kind of bandwidth are you going to be pushing?

Ebay is your friend.

[jjeffries]

Start off small. Pick up some used Cisco stuff off Ebay at 1% list. Maybe a 6500 with a couple of SUP2s for your core switch, a couple or four 7200s for the upstreams/customer facing bits. Make lots of money, upgrade to newer stuff as needed.

Re:Hire someone who knows what they are doing.

[lymond01]

The fact that you are asking on slashdot shows that you are not qualified, and what you're going to get back is a bunch of others, who aren't qualified, suggesting all sorts of half assed hacks to do it which will just result in a utterly shitty service overall.

I disagree. The Open Source community has a thousand hidden gems that a person might not have heard about. Proxmox VE for one: virtualization, with a GUI, with live migration, and if 2.0 turns out, with heartbeat and failover (high availability). Most people have never heard of this where I work even though half the place is virtualized with KVM, VMWare, Hyper-V, etc. I would think the Slashdot, with its plethora of experiences, might come up with a little-known or workable solution in an already developed product that you haven't heard of yet.

As others have said...

[KiwiGod]

What's your interface to the net, line cards, bandwidth expectations, etc. I spent 5 years building a fairly heavy duty wISP network on a stupid low budget from my boss. You can obtain used cisco stuff for cheap. For instance, you can get your hands on a 7206vxr with a NPE-G1 for $10k or less nowadays... If you need something with high redundancy do do less intensive switching, you can pick up a 6509 with a pair of SUP2-MFSC2 cards for less than $2k. As far as support contracts go, I can't imagine that you need the latest and greatest IOS, let alone a support contract that costs more than the replacement of a piece of hardware. On a side note... why are you asking about the uBR series? Are you not running an ethernet network? Last I checked, there's no such thing as "low cost commercial grade." Depending on where you are, unlicensed stuff may not cut it, dealing with interference etc. And licensed hardware is certainly not cheap. With wireless, as well as so many other areas, you get what you pay for.

Re:DD WRT

[pak9rabid]

http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index

It's Linux on low cost wireless routers.

Yeah, that's just what I'd want my ISP to run as a core router.