ITX Router

apilbeam

apilbeam

apilbeam

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Joined
1 Dec 2008
Posts
41
Just ordered:

Intel D945GSEJT

http://[COLOR="Yellow"]removed[/COLOR]/[IMG]

M350 Universal Mini-ITX Case
[IMG]http://[COLOR="Yellow"]removed[/COLOR]/[IMG]

[IMG]http://[COLOR="yellow"]removed[/COLOR]/[IMG]

Crucial 2GB DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400

Gigabit PCI Card

Intel Wireless WiFi Link 5300 PCI Express Mini Card

General idea is to build an all-in-one WiFi Router. wanted to run smoothwall but looks lilke Wi-Fi on smoothwall is a No-No so looking around for other distro's

parts SHOULD arrive tomorrow but given the "adverse" weather conditions im not sure!

should be an interesting build either way

Regards
 
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Cool, I have had the urge to build a router lately. Live in a BORING town. I wish they made router/gateway motherboards just for something like this. untangle List of OSs, nevermind the other info.

Off topic: I would love to do a real system that small, but it is impossible to do something equal to
EVGA. nForce 650i ultra Intel Core 2 Duo Wolfdale E8200 2.66GHz
6MB Cache Dual Core 1333MHz 2 Gig DIMM-DRAM NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS with 512 DDR3 memory (PCIe 1.00 x16)
 
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Nice build idea. Hotlinking images from a competitor is a bad idea though, much better to copy them and upload to photobucket et al and link to that instead.

I wondered about doing this a while ago. I thought there was an issue using a pci wireless card to broadcast a network in that the range is much worse than from a router? Limited experience with ad hoc network suggests it doesn't work out as well.

Which gigabit card are you using, and does your case need a low profile one? Regarding software I keep on intending to play with ipcop but not getting around to it, this may be worth a look.

Good luck with this, I hope it works out well. I may want to copy parts of it in a few months time if it does :)
 
sorry for the no update guys, the board and case only arrived today due the the "adverse weather conditions" and the ram and wireless card have still not yet arrived! :(

didnt really think about that for the images, sorry, i just googled!

the PCI gig card is a cheap belkin one, its only carrying a 50Mb connection so no real worries there. its not low profile, the board only has a half height backplate so i ordered a backplate and PCI Riser to put it at a right angle.

ipcop is something i have not played with that much but i am looking around for one that supports WiFi!
 
You need a wireless card from this list with AP, access point mode, listed as yes.

Ideally it should be able run in "master" mode, although "ad-hoc" mode might be good enough. Cards and chipsets which can work in master mode (otherwise known as access point or ap mode, are listed at the Linux Wireless Project.
Click to expand...

Page about this from ubuntu's community, worth reading here.

I've done a little more searching into this. It appears that any linux distribution is capable of running as a router, supporting wifi should be trivial if the driver is in the kernel and it appears that a fair few of them are. At present I think debian stable combined with iptables is looking better than the firewall applications but interested to see what you try.
 
well, today has been... interesting.

everything goes together great and the thing looks rather nice, however, as for getting an OS installed, BIG difference.

so i tried smoothwall to start with as that is the one i prefer, turns out smoothwall, along with MANY other distro's, dont support installation onto USB flash stick.

eventually i got pfSense to install and then that only picks up the PCI NIC, not the onboard one or the WLAN.

looking at the first link from JonJ678, the card i have ordered cant to AP mode anyway so it looks like trying to find an Atheros Solution.

i realize any Linux Distro could be made into a WiFi Router, however things like smoothwall and pfSense have fast boot times, a WebUI and some excellent logging features and traffic graphs.

ideally i would have this running Smoothwall Express and get the WiFi to work somehow.

looks like getting hold of a 2.5" HDD to get smoothwall up and then have a good long play with the WiFi, one of my friends is pretty good with linux stuff so im going to have to hope he can help.

although as a friends pointed out to me earlier, what im looking for is pretty much the holy grail of routers!
 
Odd. Perhaps I've been spoilt by debian/ubuntu, I assumed any of them would install to usb without complaint. Google thinks gentoo, arch and fedora all install to usb stick quite happily, is it just the stripped down firewall ones which dislike it?

I'd probably take the approach of setting up a load of live usb sticks and trying them in sequence to see how they deal with the hardware. Worth trying the current wifi card in ad hoc mode, may work well enough that you don't need to get a new one.

Boot times don't matter so much with a router that's on 24/7 but I've no idea how to set up a web gui (isn't a router set and forget?) or graphs. I'm managing my nas solely through ssh which is sufficient but not very elegant. It's running ubuntu server, just because it was quickest to set up.

The holy grail of routers is a good thing to be aiming for. Have you considered adding a storage hard drive or two, sharing them over the network the router is establishing? Combined router/nas has got to be good :)
 
JonJ678 said:
Odd. Perhaps I've been spoilt by debian/ubuntu, I assumed any of them would install to usb without complaint. Google thinks gentoo, arch and fedora all install to usb stick quite happily, is it just the stripped down firewall ones which dislike it?

I'd probably take the approach of setting up a load of live usb sticks and trying them in sequence to see how they deal with the hardware. Worth trying the current wifi card in ad hoc mode, may work well enough that you don't need to get a new one.

Boot times don't matter so much with a router that's on 24/7 but I've no idea how to set up a web gui (isn't a router set and forget?) or graphs. I'm managing my nas solely through ssh which is sufficient but not very elegant. It's running ubuntu server, just because it was quickest to set up.

The holy grail of routers is a good thing to be aiming for. Have you considered adding a storage hard drive or two, sharing them over the network the router is establishing? Combined router/nas has got to be good :)
Click to expand...

The case only has space for 1 3.5" Hdd. Its TINY!!!!!
 
yes, debian and ubuntu both load straight to USB.

i tried creating live USB sticks but get the same issue, its something to do with USB being picked up as a SCSI device.

managed to get a hard drive quite easily but had to wait afew days for a 2.5" IDE cable, aparently theyre quite hard to come by.

so anyway, cable came today and i cant install anything because neither of the network ports are picked up by smoothwall.

you cant even fit a 3.5" in there, it only takes a 2.5", besides, i have a fileserver running 24/7 so sharing storage isnt so much of an issue.
 
Hang on a sec, how were you trying to install the various linux versions? Blank usb stick plugged in, no hard drives attached, boot from optical drive containing the installation cd and pick the usb stick during install?

I've installed ubuntu onto a usb stick, not as a live usb but as a full install, from about half a dozen computers so far with no issues at any point. Is it failing to detect the usb stick during install, if so have you had a play with the bios settings? I'm not quite following where the problem arises. It's weird that smoothwall can't detect the ethernet ports, starting to wonder if you've got a faulty motherboard.
 
i was running from the CD and onto the USB but it wasnt picked up by the distro's i tried. i know it can be done, i have done it with ubuntu on backtrack on the same rig, its just because smoothwall and pfsense and afew others dont support usb install.

had pfsense installed on the new HDD and the ports are picked up straight away so thats fine, i just have to find a compatible wireless N adapter that will do access point, so far im stumped. however BSD seems to be a bit more supporting that linux.
 
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