So you want to build your own router...

[Screwdriver]

The little ARM based dev/hobby boards are a lot of fun to play with, and surprisingly useful for some... one of the nicer points is that most of them boot from SDIO, which removes a gating item for novices (brick it, pop the card out, flash the card, and back in business). One can still drive the GPIO's and what not, depends on how deep one wants to go, but if one is mostly interested in the SW side, this is easier than having to source a TTL serial cable and all the fun things there (e.g. even JTAG)..

And the price is right

I'm not sure I would consider using the Banana Pi R1 board as a full-time router, but it's a good tool for learning OpenWRT and other embedded OS's, and the cost of entry is fairly low...

One can do the same functionality with a Rasp Pi and a USB ethernet adapter, along with a cheap gigabit switch - and OpenWRT supports the Pi2/Pi3 already...

I was wondering about the Raspberry as a router. But no gigabit and the USB being 2.0 and sharing the ethernet seems like a hinderance. Might try it out as I have a spare board and gigabit switch.

 

[sfx2000]

I was wondering about the Raspberry as a router. But no gigabit and the USB being 2.0 and sharing the ethernet seems like a hinderance. Might try it out as I have a spare board and gigabit switch.

Raspberry as a router - not really recommended as like you mention, the USB2.0 interface along with just having Fast Ethernet (no gigabit).

That being said, in an emergency case, one could do some routing with it - I have a couple of USB-Ethernet dongles handy, but even there, there are better options (network sharing on Win/Mac) that can fill in for a temporary solution...

 

[sfx2000]

Wondering if the snbforums.com would support a main level DYI forum for things like the NAS, Router, SmartHome/IOT, and other hobby/dev activities outside of the primary OEM/Vendor space...

@thiggins - any thoughts here?

 

[Screwdriver]

Wondering if the snbforums.com would support a main level DYI forum for things like the NAS, Router, SmartHome/IOT, and other hobby/dev activities outside of the primary OEM/Vendor space...

@thiggins - any thoughts here?

That would be cool!

 

[pege63]

PC Engines is definitely a great product for the price (100€/$110), QuadCore x86/x64 CPU (not ARM) with AES-NI (Encryption HW Acceleration), 4GB RAM, SATA connector, 2x mini-PCIex (you can setup 2 radios), mSATA, USB 3.0, etc, and it can work with legions of different OS (Debian, Ubuntu, Voyage Linux) or 3rd party FWs (OpenWRT), you will never find a router with those specs at that price, but obviously not all users will find the ideal setup due to the extra efforts / knowledge needed, which btw is not that much.

So the full setup (with radios, power supply, mSATA/SDCard, case, antenna, pingtails) will cost you near 160€/$180, the price of a RT-AC68U, but looking at the specs...

The unique negative part IMO are the 3xGBit LANs only (in theory 1xWAN 2xLAN) which can be a problem without a Switch connected, but there's always something missing on every available product on the market, this one is not differente.

Build one and they will come