Free router?

[TheAsian1337]

You can use any old PC not in use or just plain old and turn it into a router. This gives your "router" a little boost because your using a little more high end processors and RAM than a typical router. Just think of a router, it's basically an old computer. There is youtube videos out there for tutorials but will make my own. I just wanted to share this to the forum as of I don't see and posts about this. PS I was to cheap to buy a router so I did a little research on the interwebs.

The Asian is Everywhere

[amas]

Won't it just be more efficient to just buy an actual router than use a whole PC for that function?

[amas]

Won't it just be more efficient to just buy an actual router than use a whole PC for that function?

Just to elaborate, that PC is just acting as a bridge isn't it? (Basically a range extender?)

[Blade of Grass]

Won't it just be more efficient to just buy an actual router than use a whole PC for that function?

Well, it doesn't really have to be just in bridge mode. If your clever, you can make an old PC into a DHCP serer, add a bunch of NICs and your done. You would basically be doing what most large companies do.

[Broseephus]

Why is there so much ignorance on this forum?

Putting a piece of routing software on a PC is not even close to as effective as a hardware router.

There's a reason vendors like Cisco and Juniper are in business.

[rufee]

Putting a piece of routing software on a PC is not even close to as effective as a hardware router.

Depends on what you need and how much you are willing to spend on it. Also the ease of use factor comes into play here, obviously you are not going to buy a Cisco ISR or similar router for your home. For a home or a small business getting a simple pc throwing a couple of NIC's in and putting pfSense or routerOS or what have you on it is a lot better than getting a hardware equivalent, also the GUI makes all the difference there and its faster and easier to set up and get going for people who are not very network savvy, and offers more power than any consumer, SMB router and probably some higher end ones. And if you run out you can always throw a dual, quad core cpu in. Lets face it if people built a routing machine for them selves rather than buying a consumer router (which still is a piece of hardware) there would be much less network related problems, people would have learned something in the process and probably spent around the same amount of money on one.

Cisco makes stuff for large businesses and ISP's who need these kinds of routers that's why they are in business.

[Broseephus]

If you're trying to say a beastly PC with multiple NIC's and a quad core processor is greater than a $30 router, then yeah I agree.

If you're comparing apples to apples as far as cost goes, I disagree entirely.

[rufee]

Im comparing ~200-300$ solutions

[amas]

Don't forget power consumption too. The only reason I would see myself actually integrating a router into my system would be to just save space. Also, the money that went into the nics could just be used for a router @.@

[rufee]

Well yes power is an issue for some people (i personally don't care how much power i consume).

All i am saying is if you have spare hardware and time and curiosity at this point its worth experimenting with something like router OS'es.

I had some crappy experience with routers that's why i bring this up and that's what forced me to become a fan of these solutions compared to regular routers.

As far as NIC's go ive seen 2 port gig ones for 15-20$, not sure how good they are, but they are not that expensive.

[LargeGeek]

I can vouch for the superiority of running Smoothwall or PFSense over consumer and ISP routers. Unless you are throwing an old gaming machine at the task, I think the power consumption argument is irrelevant. And I don't think the OP was referring to enterprise solutions. And on top of the performance improvements, they allow for complete customization and usually have much better support since it is one 'OS' that is widely used. DD-WRT has an advantage in this aspect as well.

And amas we are not talking about having an 'in-use' pc pull double duty as a router (although that is possible with virtualization...I've been there), but having an old PC act solely as a firewall/router. And there is an argument to having to spend more on NIC's and wireless APs.

Also it is an amazing opportunity to learn a thing or two.

[_Rogue]

Another great x86 based firewall/router software is Untangled, they have a 'lite' version that is free and should do everything a home user needs and it should be fairly bug free because it is the exact same base as their several thousand dollar commercial solutions except without certain features. I personally am just waiting for a NIC to arrive to switch my pfsense router to Untangled.