[svlug] SOHO router spiced up was: Sheevaplug ?

[Ivan Sergio Borgonovo]

On Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:43:58 -0700
Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> Quoting Luke S Crawford (lsc at prgmr.com):

> > Note, my test was done twice, once with the desktop dual-core
> > atom board, and once with the SuperMicro dual-core atom board,
> > with similar results.

> FWIW, here's something I wrote up for members of my family (where
> I get ragged on for running 24x7 server
> "uncle-enzo.linuxmafia.com" aka enzo on the home ADSL, but nobody

I think the usage of home server and habits are a bit different than
yours (but well mine may be wrong) so I can't still get convinced
that I don't need a stand alone Linux router.

I need a hungry beast since I'm a developer.
I don't have a static IP so my mail server is not exposed to the
internet and MX record point to a VPS elsewhere.
I don't like to directly put this hungry beast on the internet,
still it is the most reliable place where I could place my work and
my home stuff.
So I need something in between that will act as a router and it
doesn't have to have HDs, plenty of RAM, I don't want to plug it
into a UPS (it has to be mostly readonly) etc...
It has to be cheap... so I can have 2 in case it breaks and it
doesn't make sense to buy extended warranty for that kind of stuff.
Still it should be a bit more flexible than a "consumer" out of the
box wifi router.
eg. I need to tune iptables a little bit more than what you can do
from a web interface, I would like to install software like
wakeonlan, write some script that will mail me in case something
happen etc...
Nothing that will require too many HP/KW.

Still I'd like it to be supported and easy to keep it up to date.

Most of the things that are currently supported by openwrt and
similar are EOLed.
The ones that are not EOLed are:
- hard to find
- not really open (eg. it seems that wnr3500l still need some binary
  bundle)

So things like sheevaplug looks interesting... I can have aptitude.
But then I'd have to customize Debian so that I won't need an UPS
making the whole system mostly readonly, I'll need an extra eth and
add somehow wifi.
http://www.open-rd.org/
looks more interesting...

But well somehow the real problem seems to be people making SOHO
router and:
a) just pretending they are open for an extra price
b) making hard to really support open firmware

So I'm looking for a cheap Linux router or a new point of view that
will make me understand why I don't need one and what is the
alternative.

-- 
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
http://www.webthatworks.it