Darn you Wendell. Now I'm scouring the world for avatons

Hardware Hub Motherboards
1

Found this supermicro which would be a DREAM to run as the backbone router/firewall. Add in something for coax, fiber, or adsl and you got a perfect modem/router/firewall.

It is the mbd-a1sri-2758f-o, 8-core avaton, up to 64gb ecc, four gigabit off the c2000 avaton chipset, supermicro ipmi, runs ~$300-340 usd. Saw one used on amazon for $220

*Nerdporn nosebleed* This thing would FLY as a backbone router.

And if you look closely - usb3 internally on the board. Pfsense on a usb stick, then you can write off the logs to the nas. (That's what I would do anyway, maybe throw in a tiny 2.5" hard drive or ssd for caching)

A less expensive alternative.

Jetway nf9hql-525, $150-200

What's awesome about this one is it has a cf card slot on board. Perfect for a tiny installation of pfsense or clearos. It's not an avaton, but a dual-core atom, so no ecc. Usually don't need much more for a SOHO environment, and it will still run circles around most pre-built solutions from the likes of cisco, tp-link, etc.

The quad-core avaton board from asrock would work fantastically, too, but if you have more than 1 network you're trying to route internally you'll need another gbe controller card.

It'd be nice to see more competition in this market. :/

Maybe someone can release an itx board based on arm with tons of ethernet ports.

2

i like that jetway, 4 onboard ethernet links? badass.

3

Hopefully the fan on it isn't noisy. If it is i'd totally replace that whole heatsink and run it passive.

4

I don't think the jetway is such a great deal tbh. Intel Atom dev boards are 60-100 EUR, and Intel Edison is coming next month.

Cheaper is always possible though, you can put an ethernet port on a USB lane (or multiple USB lanes if you need more) of any ARM based dev board. A USB ethernet adapter costs maybe 10 EUR max for a good one, an ARM dev board capable of running a linux distro costs 30-60 EUR depending on how powerful it has to be. In terms of real life performance, ARM boards are generally not weaker than Atoms, but they generally offer more open source accessibility and flexibility, and are often much easier to use with custom shields.

The Avoton is a special thing, it makes all the difference, because on that AsRock board, it's very well implemented, with a ton of enterprise-grade microserver features. The supermicro board is a similar product, but more expensive. If you want a microserver board, the AsRock offers a very good price/performance ratio, but if you just want a router or fileserver or whatever, but not an HTPC or NAS with ECC memory, there is no need to invest in a microserver board, you might just as well go with an ARM dev board. There are also ARM-based and AMD-based microserver boards with enterprise grade features.

5

The reason why I am geeking out about this supermicro board is because of the 4 intel nics on board. The asrock board does not have this, and for good reason. It was not intended to be a router/firewall, but a nas device. I really think the supermicro would work best as a network appliance. You could run it as a nas, but I think that title belongs to the asrock.

Like I said above, you could get the asrock board and then get an expansion card with more intel gbe nics, but by that time you'd be spending more than the supermicro.

When I think of the possibilities for a mid-large sized business using this board, and then look at pre-built firewalls/routers from the likes of cisco, tp-link, dell, and netgear, I really think it's a no-brainer especially when you see the feature set and price of these units. For a total router build using this avaton board, 8gb of memory, 1u case with redundant 200w psu's, you're looking at 400-500 usd. A similar router will run about the same price, but with a much lower feature set, especially in terms customizability and raw power (think network encryption)

6

I agree, some more ARM motherboards would be awesome. Something like the raspberry pi would do great as a router, with a few changes. Higher clockspeed, maybe actual upgradable RAM, SATA ports would ROCK, and to be a good router you'd want to change the way the USB and ethernet controller works because the raspberry pi has them both sharing bandwidth right now and with a USB to ethernet adapter that would be bad