Build your own Router/AP

[Mercutio]

I bought one of these earlier this week. I plan to plug in a pair of mini-PCI 802.11 cards I have sitting around and to turn the whole thing into what I hope will be a vastly more powerful and reliable access point than the Linksys units that keep breaking on me.

If I get any good at building them and setting them up, I plan to replace the APs I've put at customer sites with these.

 

[Handruin]

Which OS are you planning to run on it? Is it one of those Linux jobies made specifically for routers?

 

[Mercutio]

I'll probably try it with Linux. I'm not sure how far I'll get, but there are distributions made for these things. There's a pre-built appliance OS for them as well, for the ddruedings of the world.

 

[ddrueding]

Interesting. I've done something similar with the VIA Eden ITX boards and USB WiFi. Be sure to keep us up to speed on the project.

 

[Handruin]

Do you need a pair of 802.11's to make the router work, or can it get by with just one?

 

[ddrueding]

If it's a wired router that acts as a wireless access point, no. If you want to do fun things like repeat wireless signals, or have 2 wireless zones (secure and insecure) than you need two.

 

[Mercutio]

I don't *need* a pair of NICs. My thinking was to provide an 802.11g and an 802.11a network.

Or you could have two "g" networks, one on an intranet and the other sitting in a DMZ with internet access only. Or provide a "b"-only network and a "g"-only network, so "b" clients don't kill "g" bandwidth.

And so on.

 

[Handruin]

OK, was just curious. I didn't know how the store-bought units worked internally, so I thought there might be a reason why two were needed.

This seems like a decent thing...what are you going to use as a case for it?

 

[Mercutio]

The case is a $25 option for it.

 

[ddrueding]

If you're up for it, I would be interested in seeing a list of your components.

 

[Mercutio]

I have the Geode-based mainboard, a chassis, a power supply and a pair of Atheros (work well with Linux) based miniPCI cards that I've stolen out of dead laptops. I'm not sure what I'm going to do for an antenna yet, but I have some nice Hawking omnidirectionals sitting in a box.

The power ratings on some of the cards from the site I linked are just staggering.

 

[Mercutio]

Whoops. MIPS-based. Whatever. I looked at both.

 

[ddrueding]

No kidding. 600mW!

 

[sechs]

The only problem I see is that all of the ethernet ports are 100base-T. That's probably fine for an AP-only situation, but pretty crappy for a router role. Really, you want at least one gigabit port for that; and, preferably, all.

Can a daughter card resolve this situation?

 

[Handruin]

Merc, I was curious how you made out with the home built wireless device. I'm still interested and was curious if it was worth the time and money for one of these.

 

[Mercutio]

I built it and sold it to a customer who'd had too many WRT54Gs die. They balked at the price - I think I charged them $500 where they were used to paying $60, but after explaining that I could actually fix it if it broke and the individual parts all had long warranties - and the industrial alternative was an expensive Cisco device - they went along with it.

Range and signal strength is somewhat better (compared to a stock Linksys, about 10 feet of extra radius before the signal dropped) with the very modest NICs I put in mine, but I know there were options as much as three times the transmitting power.

Setup was kind of a hassle since I did not completely know what I was doing.

My thought in the future might be to use junk laptops instead of expensive micro designs.

 

[ddrueding]

What is the most powerful a/g card that you could install in a laptop? Ideally USB.