Router Options

[Wedge]

I've been using an old ass P4 computer with an extra PCI NIC card as my router for years now, but after several power failures in my house (a situation I've since mostly resolved) I think the hard drive on it is wonked out and I've been too lazy to go try to find a cheap IDE drive to replace it.  Was thinking I should probably just replace the thing with a proper (and much lower power using) setup instead though.

I've seen the old repurposed Neoware thin clients setup to run it on e-bay, as well as some Intel Atom mobos.  Are there any other options out there I should be looking at, or are there any standalone routers of comparable quality I can get in the sub $100 price range as well?  I did the PFSense setup because I had nothing but problems with cheap routers dropping connections and shit for years, and it's worked much better for me.  So I'm looking for something highly reliable, but a bit more compact and power efficient then the old mid-tower computer I'm using now.  Wireless is not a consideration since I have some old wireless routers I can bridge to if I REALLY need it, and I have ethernet running to my bedroom and downstairs already anyways.

[HeK]

The big problem with embedded system routers is the weak CPU and the small amount of memory. That and the generally shitty firmware.
I still haven't found anything that truly compares to pfSense.

If you want to try a lower cost system, pickup a TP-Link wireless router and flash DD-WRT. It's fairly solid and TP-Link's reference designed hardware is pretty solid.

If you want to rebuild a pfSense, focus on memory over anything else. 1ghz and 1gb ram minimum for up to 100 mbit. Unless you are planning on using the http proxy features, you can get an IDE-SD adapter and run everything off a $10 sd card.

I am running my pfSense on a vm inside a HP DL360G5 that I got for $180. 16gb ram, dual quad-core Xenon CPU, four gige nics. I do content inspection and inter-vlan routing at speeds up to 2gbps.

[FlyingMongoose]

Not a lot of "high quality" routers cost less than $100 nowadays, I have a WRT54Gv2 that I flashed with DD-WRT and it works decent enough, but it's still a cheap linksys (cisco) in the end.

Honestly, if I were to get one I DIDN'T flash, I would get this http://www.dlink.com/us/en/home-solution...ing-router only because I have had wonderful experiences with them in the past (I had both a DGL-3500 and DGL-4500 and both worked wonderfully, it was nice getting my usual 20 ping to chicago while using an FTP Upload and torrenting :-) ). But they're pricey, and also closed (can't flash... at least not easily).

Unfortunately, I live a home, and have a father who believes the combo unit that our ISP gives us is golden, so he tossed one (DGL-3500), and a crazy ex GF stole my DGL-4500, oh well.

On a side note, here's the devices we have networking wise in my home.

Arris modem/router combo (provided by cable company), a SonicWall (provided by father's work), my WRT-54Gv2 (wired to modem/router and in my room via a power adapter). Items connected are as follows
WRT-54G - Samsung Galaxy S4, Chromecast, Xbox 360, Macbook, Acer Laptop, Chromebook, Nexus 7, and my desktop.
Sonicwall - iPhone 5S, iPad 2, Laptop
Router/ModemCombo - Laptop, iPhone 5S, Samsung Note (first one), Roku, Playstation 3, Another desktop, Sony Bravia, and Samsung Galaxy S3.

Most reliable connection out of all of them? WRT-54Gv2. Second most reliable is the sonicwall, least reliable, modem router combo unit. I really wish my father would have listened to me when I told him that it would cause problems. but no... oh well.

[Wedge]

OK, I ordered a Wyse R90LE thin client that has a Sempron 1.5ghz, 2GB of RAM, 4GB flash memory, 10/100/1000 onboard NIC and most importantly actually has a PCI-E slot (using those sideways mounting extension things), so I can add a $12 NIC card to it.  Everything together cost just under $90.  I don't use anything fancy in PFSense, so it should handle everything I need specs wise, and it's rated to use around 14w.

[Wedge]

And finally got the NIC card today.  Had some odd problems.  The NIC card doesn't want to be the WAN port, but works fine as the LAN port.  And I did the manual install at first and it made me install either the multi-core kernel (this machine is single core) or the no VGA/keyboard kernel, which I didn't want.  Just used the quick install a second time and it let me use the standard kernel and setup the hard drive allocation fine on its own.  Then had to find the default BIOS password for these machines so I could get it to stop trying to boot from LAN when it starts up.

Seems to be all working now though, and I can finally retire that poor old tower PC that's been sitting under my desk, and only use 14W on my router like a normal person.

[HeK]

and only use 14W on my router like a normal person.

Oops