# Confession time, appliance or bsd-box



## bluetick (Sep 16, 2010)

I must confess, I have 3 computers running FreeBSD at home but I use a linksys router on the dsl connection. I ran a BSD box setup for several years but "fell off the wagon" and bought the linksys.

Do you run a cracker box router or a BSD-box??


Can you tell it's a slow afternoon here. =)


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## phoenix (Sep 17, 2010)

At home, I use a TP-Link 108 Mbps wireless router with UPnP enabled.

At work, I use FreeBSD boxes for packet filtering.


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## aragon (Sep 17, 2010)

NanoBSD on a Soekris.  Bliss...


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## fronclynne (Sep 17, 2010)

Well, I can pick up a WRT54G for around $25, so it's kinda hard to justify a full-on router unless I actually need one.  But who knows, maybe one day I'll want some $45000 monster that can embroider every packet in real time with little hanging sheep in gold thread.


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## Matty (Sep 20, 2010)

aragon said:
			
		

> NanoBSD on a Soekris.  Bliss...



do they have 1Gb lan _and_ wan ports?


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## aragon (Sep 20, 2010)

Matty said:
			
		

> do they have 1Gb lan _and_ wan ports?


Soekris have teased us with specs of the Net6501 that will have 4 1Gb LAN ports as well as PCIe expansion, but it's not available yet and I'm not holding my breath.

For that you should rather consider a recent Atom board.  Supermicro make one with 2 1Gb NICs.  For more ports you might consider using 802.1q based VLANs with a Routerboard RB250GS (cheap).


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## loos (Jan 23, 2011)

Well, ubiquiti RSPRO have 4 x 1Gb ports (1 wan + 3 lan) and it's _really_ working fine with -current.
Some other hardware also work, but generally the flash size is too small for FreeBSD (SOHO routers with (working) USB ports provide an easy way to workaround this).
We've started a list of supported devices, but it is still in its infancy:
http://wiki.freebsd.org/AdrianChadd/EmbeddedDevices


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## Orum (Jan 28, 2011)

I have four FreeBSD machines that are critical to my network--two routers, and two servers.  One router and server is at a family member's home, and in exchange for managing their network I get to cheaply colocate my network services and backups.  The other two are on my end, doing the same thing.


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## da1 (Jan 28, 2011)

4 FreeBSD boxed acting as routers in 4 different city locations. Reason: using the old P1,P2 & P3's I had in my basement simply because they were occupying space and I also need other applications like apache, samba (1 box is acting as a NAS (a total of 2TB is provided) - another one as a FTP server). I have ipsec/racoon based VPN between them because each machine carries a SOHO network with around 5-7 windows clients; also using bind as cache server .

Simply put, I prefer pc's because they are more flexible for my and my client's needs.

PS: 5th box should become available sometime during the summer (4th one was activated last week-end)


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## bluetick (Mar 14, 2011)

With att-dsl going to net metering.

I'll be going back to a FreeBSD router-proxy setup to track usage per user.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Exclusive-ATT-To-Impose-Caps-Overages-113149


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## gkontos (Mar 14, 2011)

Cisco 836 router and a PIX 515 with 6 interfaces for my small SOHO environment. There is a FreeBSD box also acting as a proxy server. If I didn't have the PIX I would probably go with OpenBSD and PF.


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