Building own router

[Jakoob]

Hi guys,
as my WL-500W died (R.I.P.) I'm looking for some replacement. I would like to use it also as NAS for storing data, movies, etc.

My requirements are:
1) at least 2 Gbit ports
2) at least one SATA port
3) low power (under 10 W if possible)
4) slot for Wi-Fi card (not necessary)

Is there some board on the market with VIA, ARM, ATOM.. that will meet these conditions? I did some small research through the market, but no success at all.

Thanks for help!

Jakoob

 

[bendsley]

Hi guys,
as my WL-500W died (R.I.P.) I'm looking for some replacement. I would like to use it also as NAS for storing data, movies, etc.

My requirements are:
1) at least 2 Gbit ports
2) at least one SATA port
3) low power (under 10 W if possible)
4) slot for Wi-Fi card (not necessary)

Is there some board on the market with VIA, ARM, ATOM.. that will meet these conditions? I did some small research through the market, but no success at all.

Thanks for help!

Jakoob

What about something like http://www.fit-pc.com/web/fit-pc2/fit-pc2-models/

You would have to get a USB to SATA adapter. Not sure on the wattage, but just trying to give you a suggestion. I have one that has pfSense running on it....and it runs phenomenally on it.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I built a low power, 1U rack mount kit from SuperMicro for home home setup. Has a dual core D510 Atom, pair of onboard Intel gigabit NICs. Low power, pretty much noiseless, and I used a Seagate Pipeline hard drive in it..which is a hard drive designed for use in small hot continuous use devices like DVRs that run 24x7. It's a low power ultra quiet hard drive.

Got all the goodies at Newegg. I picked the front I/O port Supermicro chassis..not the rear one.

Slap VMWare ESXi on it...and load some functional guests like a firewall distro, NAS distro, etc.

 

[occamsrazor]

What about something like http://www.fit-pc.com/web/fit-pc2/fit-pc2-models/

I think the Fit-PC is a pretty interesting device for this purpose, I was seriously considering it... You'd want the PC2i model with the dual-NICs I think, if you want to use it as a router.

That said, I'm pretty happy with my Cisco E3000 running Tomato firmware, and a separate NAS (QNAP TS-239ProII), but that's beside the point.

 

[corndog]

Once you get the hardware figured out, it's time to get to the software setup. I generally find when I "roll my own" router, it all starts out nice and neat, but then I end up with a whole pile of firewall rules, several VPNs, lots of static routes, some dynamic routing, and after a while it gets complex enough that I need to document a whole lot of it in case the custom router dies and I need to recreate the setup on another machine.

For this reason, I was very happy to find vyatta. Vyatta basically does everything the same as I was doing it "by hand" before on Linux (openVPN for tunnels, quagga for dynamic routing, strongSWAN for IPSec, etc etc etc) but it has it all nicely packaged in a system that runs the whole thing from one single setup file - like a cisco router or a juniper. So all I need to do now is back up the single config file and I won't miss any of my setup if I have to recreate it.

Highly recommended. Vyatta is easy to find on google.