I want to throw away my current router and i dont know what its better buy new router (im looking into LinkSys WRT54GL and DD-WRT it.) or make a pfsense box (i have an old Core 2 Duo,2gb ram,geforce 9600 gtx,200 something gb hdd.) if i go with the pfsense box i will only have to buy one or two nic (i dont know xD). and a new cpu fan.
If you've got the hardware lying around I'd give pfsense a go. You won't need that video card but you can just take it out one you have everything set up (to save power). If you want WiFi you can do it in pfsense (the latest version has much better support for it than previously but probably won't work with AC) But you're better off using a separate WAP for it.
For a basic set up you'll need two NICs, one for WAN and one for LAN and a switch so you can connect all your devices to it.
I don't have any reason right now to use WIFI.I use WIFI only when i want to use my tablet.
Can you tell me the benefits of pfsense i will have if i go with it and not with new router?.
Performance. Better firewall. More configurable. There's lots of packages you can install on it like squid, snort, freeradius, etc. Expandability.
Essentially it's enterprise level stuff except you can do it on a cheap computer instead of expensive hardware.
Oh, and if you've already got the computer then it's free.
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new router ~ $100 or <$50 for a couple of NICs for the old pc (strip it back and underclock it (if you can)), it will be money well spent and you'll learn stuff along the way... win, win.
You might save money by building a pfsense box and reuse old hardware lying around but be aware that you will also be giving up a lot of time learning how to configure it beyond the basic setup if you are not already well versed in network administration. It's not like plugging in an old netgear that you pickup off the self at Best Buy where you change some passwords and maybe forward a few ports and off you go. I still haven't gotten the jails on my FreeNAS box to work properly and I had this weird performance issue where my desktop was only getting about 45 mbps down / 1 mbps up but my dell laptop was getting 120 mbps down/ 12 mbps up through my wireless AC access point. I'm considering trying Sophos UTM Home edition or OPNSense. Sophos has a pretty strong feature set and a couple things that pfsense doesn't offer. The Home edition's free for up to 50 ip's. OPNSense is a branch of pfSense but it looks like it has a more modern GUI.
Any opinion about the LinkSys WRT54GL?
They're super old and won't probably be able to handle the throughput or amount of connections that you'll want to use. In their day though they were obviously great and will probably go down as one of the greatest routers of all-time, simply for their flexibility. The 54G family isn't the only thing that DD-WRT will run on anymore, just like every open-source software it's moving along with technology. If I were you I'd get my hands on a much more recent router that supports DD-WRT such as the Asus RT-N66U, I had it for many years and it was great, and it's also easy to install DD-WRT onto. There does also exist routers that come pre-installed with DD-WRT such as those from buffalo.
As far as pfSense goes, it's really really great but in my opinion a little overkill for a small home setting, and it will involve a lot of your time behind a console figuring out how to get it to work the way you want.
The fact that you ask between a very old router and pfsense make me say get a different router.
You want cheap then get a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND. Good enough till you hit 100mbit internet. after that you get on the TP-Link Archer stuff and Asus routers. They cost more but can handle faster internet connections.
Still playing around with PFsense is still great thing to learn.
+1 for a pfsence box, nothing to loose.
sell the gpu and buy a good dual nic card and plug your router into it and set it as an AP.
biggest Pro for pfsence is that you'll learn alot and it's fun.
If you build / use a computer for a router, you should give a quick try to some of the various router softwares out there that are available for free for the x86 architecture, like pfsense, smoothwall, and dd-wrt (yes it is or at least was at one time available for x86).
The advantages of the x86 router are much more power/hardware grunt, capability of running far more advanced options including a huge cache pool with a hard drive and transparent proxy cache, trying out different router software, and the sheer flexibility of the software and hardware.
If you do build it there is also no reason to need a dual or more port NIC, you can just slap in several single port ones... and this is coming from someone that has dual and quad port nics in her parts bin.
Also, the core 2 duo is supreme overkill for this, though if you have it and no other use go for it. Just don't use something that is very power hoggish like a pentium 4 prescott!
yeah, stay away from old P4 chips..
i had a an overclocked p4 northwood server/router. i was bored...adn it was sitting there.
do not recommend lol.
i reckon a core 2 duo is perfect though, loads of grunt, low power... there everywhere on ebay. DOIT-shia labeouf
Definitely build your own, and consider IPfire as well as pfSense.
For one thing, it's compatible with more hardware so you're a little more free to shop for bargains on your NIC.
I think my "biggest problem" with the old pc is dust. ooh man there is a lot of dust in there xD.
Can i use my old crappy router as switch?.
@Stone
I have core 2 duo xD
@Doctor_Rodney_McKay
I also i'm gonna need heat sink :/
Well you won't need to push any cpu too hard for a home router, so you can downclock and get an inexpensive one. I'll recommend Gammaxx, or any old model Cooler Master, Zalman, etc. you can find at a discount.
Yes, just turn off DHCP and anything else you can turn off like firewall/NAT, etc.
You need one NIC for each network your router will be connected to. So if you have a WAN and LAN network then you need two NICs.
@Dexter_Kane
The only things i will connect is my console my pc and my tablet with wifi sometimes and later if i want to do something bigger with my network i will change my setup xD.