Building own Router - Advantages ?

[Clocker]

I picked up one of these ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135364 ) for $19AR so I decided to throw it in the old Bitfenix ITX case I have for a project PC. I also threw in a spare 8gb or RAM and a 120GB SSD I already had.

Was considering making the machine a router with either Untangle or Smoothwall or something else (recommendations?). But then I started to wonder what the true advantages of building your own router really are. Would you guys recommend it or not, and why?

I saw the ArsTechnica article and they seems to only focus on speed. Speed is good but my RT-N66U is already fast enough. I'm looking for capability (obviously the homegrown router doesn't have wireless).

Thanks!

 

[Handruin]

You may also want to consider trying pfSense as an option when building a firewall/router. That motherboard only has one NIC so you'll likely need to get another so you have a dedicated WAN and LAN ports for this project.

I looked into doing this also because I wanted more features than what typical consumer routers offer but after searching for parts and figuring out what would perform the best I decided against it and to go with Ubiquiti as a dedicated firewall & router as an appliance. I think from a learning perspective this can be useful and it may perform well but I don't know much about that AMD chip to give feedback on it's capabilities as a router.

 

[Mercutio]

At home, my network runs through a VM with Untangle as the router OS. I could set up a router a whole lot of different ways and overall I don't think it makes much difference for anything I'm doing, it's just that I already had the Untangle VM set up.

 

[Clocker]

I thought there would be more interest in this topic! I have a 2nd NIC so I will just play with whatever is easiest first and report back...

 

[Mercutio]

It's fun to play with, but at the end of the day, it's a router in a low demand environment. Unless your requirements involve complex encryption or QoS needs, probably just about everything will do what you need.

 

[ddrueding]

I've done untangle, smoothwall, and PFSense. They all do the things that routers need to do. Unless you have a very fast connection or specific interesting needs it is likely that a standalone router will do just as well with less power consumption.

I'll be running a VM for my firewall soon, but only because the VM server will be running 24/7 anyway.

 

[Clocker]

Do the DIY routers offer much with respect to control over content filtering and being able to monitor usage etc?

 

[Mercutio]

They certainly can, if that's a module you need. I've not needed to investigate. I believe Untangle has its filtering module set up as part of a subscription package, but your standard-issue OSS system can probably run Squidguard if you want a free option.