[HN Gopher] How to build a Linux-based wireless router out of sp... ___________________________________________________________________ How to build a Linux-based wireless router out of spare parts (1998) Author : giuliomagnifico Score : 84 points Date : 2023-02-05 16:27 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.rage.net) (TXT) w3m dump (www.rage.net) | macropin wrote: | I built something similar around the same time to share BigPond | Cable. IIRC it was a 486 based machine with dual NICS, single HD | floppy drive and FreeSCO^ Linux based router on floppy. It was | very reliable, and lived under the stairs of my parents house | until they moved. | | ^ https://freesco.sourceforge.net/ | the_third_wave wrote: | The first wireless network here on the farm was based around a | full tower containing an Abit BP-6 [1] with 2x366MHz Celerons | (running at 400 MHz) into which I had placed a PCMCIA to ISA | adapter containing an Engenius Senao 200mw PCMCIA Card w/MMCX | Connectors [1] and two external antennas. That BP-6 - which used | to be my development machine until I got something a bit more up | to date - was fairly overloaded since it also hosted out mail, | web services, surveillance cameras, file/print/etc services, | media services and more. Still, it worked and covered quite a big | area both due to the high-power wifi adapter as well as the fact | that the antennas were placed on a high central place. I built it | in 2003 and replaced it with a WRT54GL after a few years. The | WRT54GL was killed by Thor and replaced with an Asus RT-N16 which | also got killed by lightning, replaced with another RT-N16 which | - you guessed it - got killed by lightning after which I replaced | it with a host of cheapo 802.11g routers which also got blown up. | Then I installed some large surge protectors (i.e. large and | overly expensive MOVs [2]) after which these problems were | solved. I now use a bunch of Xiaomi "routers" (flashed with | OpenWRT) as access points, leaving the routing to a LXC container | on the server-under-the-stairs. The BP-6 stands in the "museum" - | that is stuffed away in the barn next to a number of other relics | from the past. | | [1] | https://www.keenansystems.com/store/engenius_senao_200mw_pcm... | | [2] https://components101.com/articles/metal-oxide-varistor- | mov-... | lamontcg wrote: | I think around 2002 I had a FreeBSD box running as a | firewall/wireless router with an ath0 card (long since forgotten | what that was) using a very old motherboard (might have been from | a prior job in 1999 or so). Also had a Sparc 5 hanging off it | which I used as a ircd and httpd server since that was just less | likely to get hacked into running servers (and no cloudy anything | I could buy back then). | shmerl wrote: | Why is situation with wireless routers still so messed up? Barely | anything new coming out has proper upstream Linux drivers. | Broadcom chipsets are one of the worst offenders, but others are | barely any better. | | Why can't Intel make some? | cowmix wrote: | At the time, using KA9Q on top of DOS was also a great way to | accomplish the same outcome. | uniformlyrandom wrote: | What if I'd like to build a linux router out of modern hardware? | | I would like to stop upgrading routers every two years (maybe | just upgrade the wifi cards in it), and have full control over | router's UI (command line is fine). | | Is this a stupid idea? | zekica wrote: | You should really look into Intel Pentium N6005 based mini PCs | with up to 5 ethernet inferaces - they are very versatile and | you can choose from different Router systems: OpenWRT, pfSense, | opnSense and others. They consume less than 10 watts idle (most | of the time) and about 25W max. Regular consumer routers | consume 3-5W idle and about 15W max, so not much of a | difference. You can even use a hypervisor and use VT-d to pass | through the ethernet cards to the router VM. The only downside | is that there are a small number of PCIe cards that work good | as an wireless AP - mostly Mediatek based ones (some | Qualcomm/Atheros cards work fine too). | throwaway892238 wrote: | Depends what you want. Modern routers can have faster speeds | than the base specs, and can switch easily between different | modes (ap/bridge/mesh/etc). But yours would be more secure and | less likely to crap out from cheap hardware. Use a | mini/embedded PC platform (fanless + low energy), a network | chip with good Linux support, and don't use moving disks, or | write logs to flash, so the storage won't die. Should last you | 10-20 years. *edit* just found this site, haven't looked for | parts in a decade: https://pcpartpicker.com | tiagod wrote: | >and less likely to crap out from cheap hardware | | For what it's worth, I put up an already old, extremely cheap | TP-Link AP inside an old greenhouse some 5 years ago, and | it's still working. Stopped working twice from being full of | rain water (coming from holes in the roof), and it started | working again after I drained the water and dried it for a | few days. | rektide wrote: | It's a great idea. | | It's a bit of a pain the ass from a hardware sense. OpenWRT is | available & easy but there's quite limited hardware (newely no | wifi6), but honestly, at this point, I'd much rather use a real | computer and some add-in cards. | | Alas availability of hardware- specifically AP grade cards & | things to plug them into is forsakenly awful. One has to | scrounge around for increasingly absurdly priced botique | adapters with awful availability. Thankfully we're starting to | see m.2 form-factor show up, but it used to all be mini-pcie or | just mini-pci, which wifi and only wifi uses & is hard to find. | Oh and for real AP grade cards, they have good sized heatsinks | and sometimes require auxiliary DC power, which is just like | two test point stubs you have to freeform find power for. | | For a while Compex was making cards eith equivalent-ish | performance (same chipset) to a popular longrunning openwrt | router, the Netgear x4s, for significantly under $100. But | modern AP chips are super hard to find last I checked, had | huge-ish boards, and were over $200. | | Its a long hope but AP over USB is something I did for a long | time & was never quite right & I eventually gave up, after | trying dozens of chipsets, but folk like MediaTek seem to be | far lower bullshit than the past shady ass sorrid sad history | of wifi, and it feels like it may come about again. The ideal | world is that like a $100 wifi usb card would just work. And | then we could potentially seed these cheaper things all around; | not as powerful or capable maybe, but more than made up for by | having much smaller cell size: the actual cure-all of wifi! | | Im excited for a world where we get beyond openwrt. It's been | great but it's a tight narrow specific fix, on a troubled set | of platforms, with a lot of constraints. A small PC-based | revolution would be great to see. Just run Debian or Arch, what | you know. Have standard & upgradeable componentry for cards. | It'd be nice for wifi to not be so very very special & bundled. | zekica wrote: | I run OpenWRT on ASUS RT-AX53U (WiFi 6 - MT915E) and it works | fine - as an AP only, it can manage 800Mbps and routing with | no SQM 500Mpbs (using Software Flow Offloading). | rektide wrote: | Openwrt works fine but it's all so special. Special | software running on special hardware. Just having a PC with | a good card in it has soundsd greatly appealing for so | long. | | During the PogoPlug/SheevaPlug phase I had some nice | repurposed hardware that ran upstream Debian, had good ram, | and some capable atheros wifi. It was so nice having a less | special purpose system, having just a regular computer that | happened to have good wifi ap gear plugged in. | | Openwrt "works fine" but it feels like a fallback position, | something I have merely resorted to, for having failed to | do what should be obvious & easy with everyday add-ins. | hamandcheese wrote: | Firewalla, Pretectli, and plenty of Amazon/AliExpress vendors | sell little mini PCs with a bunch of ethernet ports. I use one | running NixOS as my home router. | | Re: wifi cards, I've not seen any wifi cards that seem like a | suitable replacement to a dedicated AP. I just use a consumer | Asus router in bridge mode instead of router mode. | GuB-42 wrote: | Not stupid, but you also have to understand the downsides. | | I once did that, essentially just a linux PC with extra network | cards. It doubled as a NAS too. One issue is simply that when | you are playing with it (updates and all that), you won't have | a router and you will lose internet access for all your | connected devices. You also have to consider power outages (UPS | highly recommended) and electricity costs. It gives you a lot | of flexibility, but it also gives you a hobby. In the end I | backed off and got an off-the-shelf router like everyone else, | the server is still there, but it doesn't do routing anymore. | Sure, I lose a bit of control, but it works, and solving | problems is usually just "turn it off and on again", and I | don't want to play hotline when my roommate loses internet | access. | | A compromise is take an off-the-shelf router and flash an | alternative firmware like OpenWrt. | | Also, why do you need upgrading routers every two years? Things | don't move that fast, and widespread adoption of new standards | even less so. If WiFi is the reason you change so much, you can | buy access points and connect them to your router with wires. | raggi wrote: | This is a border router, not a wireless router, but this was my | build https://res.rag.pub/2020-11-1-an-home-router.html | | I've been running this configuration for 3 years. There's no | fancy UI, but there's also no awful vendor code involved. I | don't think about my router anymore, and internet issues no | longer occur inside my house, at all. It achieves line rate in | both directions while also consistently maintaining less than | 10ms of bufferbloat. | seized wrote: | While not Linux, look at OPNSense. It's a fork of pfSense | without the bad behavior of Netgate. Will run on all sorts of | hardware and has been utterly reliable for me. | mindslight wrote: | I switched to generic amd64 machines for my main router and 2 | access points and haven't looked back. Each machine has a | Mikrotik R11e-2HnD for 2.4GHz (AR958x), and a Compex card | (WLE900VX?) for 5Ghz (QCA986x/988x, surplus). I think the | 2.4GHz cards are fine with libre software out of the box, but | the 5GHz cards want a firmware blob (which I consider the same | freedom/security concerns as if the blob were loaded from | flash, like the 2.4GHz cards). | | I use the 2.4GHz extensively for phones/tablets/NoT devices and | haven't noticed any problems with it. I don't actually use the | 5GHz too much it but it seems to work. As far as newer | technologies, I've never felt the need to squeeze as much | bandwidth as possible out of wireless. | | The main router has extensive firewall rules (nftables) and VPN | links that would be an unmaintainable low-performance mess on a | born-to-be-ewaste consumer router. The distro used to be Debian | but I've moved them all to NixOS for easier admin. | [deleted] | giuliomagnifico wrote: | Not a stupid idea, lots of people apre are doing it with custom | machine using OpenWrt. | throwanem wrote: | Not at all, although PFSense is based on BSD rather than Linux. | It's incredibly full-featured (with even a complete and | polished web UI) and pretty easy to configure and operate, and | definitely where I'd suggest starting. | irfwashere wrote: | Yes there's a lot of good content now with guidance on | setting up one of these pf or opnsense routers. Really cool | stuff. And use any old router you have in AP mode and you're | set! | cassianoleal wrote: | OpenWRT [0] OTOH is actually Linux. Also very full featured, | including a GUI (LuCI) that even though some times lags a | little behind the command-line and config file stuff, is | still pretty good. | | As another FreeBSD-based alternative, there's the PFSense | fork OPNSense [1], which started out as a fork of PfSense | after the Netgate takeover and complaints about their | openness and support for the community. | | [0] https://openwrt.org/ | | [1] https://opnsense.com/ | throwanem wrote: | Oh, I didn't know about the fork - I guess that shows how | long it's been since I last ran PFSense. Good to know, | thanks! | [deleted] | hexagonwin wrote: | It's still possible and although it isn't linux we have things | like pfsense too. However, unless you're trying to do something | special in the router a cheap router with openwrt on it would | do the job. | toast0 wrote: | Build a nice x86 based router between your uplink(s) and your | LAN (it can also be your home server), then get cheap wireless | routers and run them in access point mode. You can shop for | wireless routers than run OpenWRT if you want to customize a | bit more. | | If you're feeling really fancy, you can built redundant routers | and figure out failover; pfsync is available on OpenBSD and | FreeBSD which allows for nearly seamless transition of NATed | connections. Much easier to manage if you don't have to deal | with the scourge that is PPPoE though. | voltagex_ wrote: | Having done this for a few years, I can say that you should get | a separate access point and leave OpenWRT for routing / | switching only. I also have Mikrotik gear handling >1GBe | duties. | refracture wrote: | I'm using an old Haswell i5 hp envy to run pfsense. Wifi is | done by a dedicated ubiquity access point. | | I can't see why I should need to upgrade anything hardware | related for some time. | zokier wrote: | There are plenty of options, especially if you want pure router | and can do wireless APs separately. One recent example | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31454929 although it is | opnsense the hw should run linux also nicely | [deleted] | totoglazer wrote: | This is a wild Time Machine. ISA cards. 28.8 upload. Thanks for | sharing. | giuliomagnifico wrote: | ...and the prices! He is "happy" because using those spare | parts he can spend only 1300$ for a wireless router. | jeffbee wrote: | It seemed reasonable at the time. I briefly used a DEC Multia | with two Aironet LM4500 PCMCIA wireless cards as a point-to- | point backhaul and access point. That was a lot of money for | hardware but the cable company wanted tens of thousands of | dollars to bring coax a very short distance to the site, and | ADSL in those days was still something you could expect to | deliver just 128kbps upstream under ideal conditions. | throwanem wrote: | And the single-disk router distro! In the Coyote Linux | derivative I ran that for _years_ , back in the early | noughties, on the one of several beat-up parts machines I then | had which could run two 3C509 cards at once - who knows how I | laid hands on those, but once I got it working it was a | reliable enough setup for the whole more-or-less group house | whose slant-ceilinged back attic room I lived in. Unlike in the | article, we were within DSL range of the nearest CO and had no | load coils to worry about, so any POTS extension would do - | hence being able to have the whole house's network ops up in my | little garret. I had a couple of desks and tables in there plus | my little twin mattress and an Ikea Poang chair - and, thanks | to a long run of Cat-5 I'd somehow managed to scrounge, not | only 802.11b coverage for the whole house with one of the | early-model WRT-54Gs, but even rudimentary internet TV for the | living room with another hacked-together beige box and an All- | in-Wonder card bought used with an employee discount from the | cheesy little computer store I'd spent a few months working at. | We even had four-player Gauntlet with MAME and a few cheap USB | 1.0 controllers. | | Thin times by the standards of the life I live these days, but | good times, too. | znpy wrote: | Floppydistros! The memories! | | Booting linux on an internet cafe from a floppydistro because | I didn't really know what linux was and my parents wouldn't | let me try stuff on the "home computer". | | What was it, coyote linux? Can't really remember now :) | throwanem wrote: | Coyote, yeah! Same one I ran, and maybe the first time I | ever actually put Linux to a useful purpose beyond | satisfying my own intellectual curiosity - my _first_ first | time being a few years earlier with a Slackware floppy | install on a Toshiba Tecra laptop. I had to scrape together | enough disks for the A set, download and image them from | the Windows 95 install, and then print out enough docs to | figure out how to get dialup working again once I was done | repaving the machine with a then totally unfamiliar | environment - I 'd bought the laptop used with summer-job | money and it hadn't come with OS install media, so I either | got it working or I was just SOL, with no access any longer | from Tennessee to the mostly West Coast-based social circle | that Internet access had made available to me, and no | obvious way to recover the machine to a working state. | Luckily, it didn't come to that! Good times. :D | aecay wrote: | And the fact that determining the true lat/long of one's | location was best done by using mapquest.com (ah memories...). | Unscrambled GPS for civilians didn't come along for another | couple years. | moremetadata wrote: | Checks out but the format has changed. | https://web.archive.org/web/19990429115208/http://www.rage.n... | | Previously documented and viewable page omissions is Wayback | Machine's court order problem. | neurostimulant wrote: | The linux router project referenced by the article is now | redirecting to a porn site. Snapshot from 1998: | https://web.archive.org/web/19981212030604/http://www.linuxr... | PragmaticPulp wrote: | > The total cost of each end of the router, including antennas | and cabling, is less than 1300 US dollars, which is a | considerable cost savings over the dedicated bridge units | (typically about 3100 US each) available from the same | manufacturer. | | Adjusted for inflation, $1300 in 1998 dollars is equivalent to | nearly $2400 in today's dollars. The $3100 manufacturer price | would be equivalent to $5700 today. | | Really puts into perspective how accessible computing and | hardware have become. | throwaway892238 wrote: | I used to build Linux router software that would fit on a floppy | disk and run it in a 486DX2, for absolutely no reason except it | was fun as hell. Made a nice web UI, packed in a ton of advanced | features. Wanted to try and start a company to sell little open | source routers, but then I found out cheap routers were quite | hard to make money on, so I became a sysadmin instead and mostly | browsed Slashdot for 10 years. My big regret is not becoming a | musician or woodworker instead. | pengaru wrote: | Did something similar-ish, except using an old 386 motherboard | packed to the gills with 30-pin SIMMs. Booted off 3.5" floppy | into initramfs. Init was a busybox shell script (@/linuxrc | IIRC) to setup ip masquerading as it was known then, then it'd | deliberately panic by exiting init while the kernel kept | running the network stack with no userspace. | | That little pile of PC debris eventually became a dialup POP | for a local girl I met on IRC who was at constant war with her | older brother over their shared AOL account, despite having | their own computers w/phone lines. Fun times, those teen-aged | years. | | Linux was such a game changer back then, enabling kids to | deploy their own ISP if they just read the HOWTOs and collected | enough computer trash. | hk1337 wrote: | > Linux router software that would fit on a floppy disk and run | it in a 486DX2 | | I thought this was me that posted this and forgot I posted it. | I did this exact thing with same equipment back in college. | | My reasoning was slightly different. I did do it just for fun | but also I wanted to run multiple computers and servers and the | university was pretty strict on the one computer per connection | rule. | dualboot wrote: | There are a lot of us out there. | ghaff wrote: | In the early days of consumer broadband, routers/switches | were these exotic things and the cable companies absolutely | would not support the configuration. | johnklos wrote: | Reminds me of creating a wireless access point using an old 80486 | laptop and a ORiNOCO Bronze wireless card, a pigtail and an | antenna. It was for one of the first free public wireless | networks in Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan, New York, in 2001. | | The bandwidth was provided by alt.coffee, a coffee and Internet | cafe. It took some convincing to get the owners of alt.coffee to | let me do this because they thought it would be bad for business. | I had to convince them that people who could afford laptops with | wireless weren't renting their computers, but they'd likely buy | coffee. It worked :) | | The laptop ran NetBSD and was installed in the awning of | Accidental CDs a few doors down from alt.coffee because they were | open 24/7, so someone was always at the front of the store. It | routed its own private subnet that the NetBSD router in | alt.coffee NAT'd and provided public IPv6 via 6bone. | | I used 10BASE2 coax cable so I could run it along the building | and nobody would mess with it, because it blended in perfectly | with all the cable TV coax running on the outside of the | building. | | Aside from replacing the hard drive once, it ran for several | years before regular access points became affordable. | | What fun! | projektfu wrote: | I'd worry about some cable guy attempting to splice it before | noticing it's the wrong thickness. I loved 10Base2 because it | was so easy to install, no hub required. But apparently point | to point is easier for most offices. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | > in 2001 | | > and provided public IPv6 | | Honestly this is the part that surprised me the most. It's | funny how unevenly the future has been distributed:) | | (As of early 2023 I appear to have finally gotten service to my | house that reliably has IPv6. In 2022 this was not the case.) | fellowmartian wrote: | Man, I'm always jealous when I hear these tales of how things | used to be here. I came to New York in early 2021 and my | experience is completely different - it's basically 24/7 grind | and this kind of hacker fun seems inconceivable now. But maybe | I'm just looking in the wrong places. | 7speter wrote: | > it's basically 24/7 grind and | | Rent is too damn high for anything else | gregsadetsky wrote: | I feel like https://www.nycresistor.com/ and | https://www.nycmesh.net/ still embody the spirit of those | early communities! | _0xdd wrote: | For anyone interested in creating their own router running Linux | or *BSD, check out the PC Engines APU2 series. Very inexpensive | and uses coreboot. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-02-05 23:00 UTC)