Turning my windows 7 pc into a router

Calranthe

Calranthe

Calranthe

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I have a fairly high spec windows 7 server which is on 24/7 and is used for both game servers (space engineers, minecraft ect) A mud (multi user dungeon precursor to games like EQ) which has run in one form or another since 98.
Based around Windows 7 professional, 16gb ram, i7 4790k, roughly 12 TB in storage drives.

Now I am getting tired of buying routers and having them in some cases literally melt (we have been told that due to our online life and the way we use the net our demands on a consumer grade router is more than most can handle) 2 gaming pc's 3 servers, Xbox one, Ps4, Ps3, 10 mobile platforms (phones/tablets) Multiple TB transfers between systems daily and 18+ hours a day of heavy use.

Most of the current crop look like and act like they are more about style than substance, I mean both the nighthawk and new asus routers lead on a marketing campaign based around there looks.

So my idea is thus and if anyone has experience of it please chime in.
Hardware
4 port RJ45 Gigabit card like the startech
Ac 1900 wireless adapter

Those together will run me about £230 which may sound a lot but if I can configure my Windows 7 server (it has good quality firewall and virus protection) it should be able to act as one hell of a router.

First test (without buying anything using my old windows 7 laptop and its internal wireless adapter) By simply plugging my fibre modem into the laptop sharing connection and configuring the wireless adapter as a secure access point looks promising, as in the signal strength from my laptop was better and reached further to allow my wife to connect via her phone from the furthest point in our property and that was compared to an Asus RT AC87U £200 triband router signal.

Will post updates as to how successful this is, my plan is replace our router completely by the time we move house and use the server as a secure station.
 
or Sophos UTM which I run in a Hyper V virtual machine on passively cooled Zotac nano CI323 (4 core Braswell) which also acts as a low power Win10 desktop for browsing and forums (rather firing up the X99 gaming rig) & NNTP client.

The nano has 2 NICs so one dedicated to the WAN connection via the FTTC modem and the other connects to a gigabit hub for my LAN.
 
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I was going to say the machine is overkill but if it's already always-on acting as a server then go for it! Get it to do DNS caching too (I use pdnsd), it's lovely.

APM said:
pfsense if you want a meaty project to get stuck into.
Click to expand...

What would you suggest, installing it in a VM? (OP is using Win 7 Pro.) Is that possible or safe?
 
4 port startech card is terrible idea, if you must do this, at least get proper intel network cards.

If you are having routers melt then something is seriously wrong - as even consumer grade draytek, Linksys or even netgear we have used at work, are fine 24/7 with more workload than you list.

Windows 7 is a terrible idea - either buy something fit for purpose edgerouter or Cisco, or build a pfsense box.
 
Calranthe said:
I have a fairly high spec windows 7 server which is on 24/7 and is used for both game servers (space engineers, minecraft ect) A mud (multi user dungeon precursor to games like EQ) which has run in one form or another since 98.
Based around Windows 7 professional, 16gb ram, i7 4790k, roughly 12 TB in storage drives.

Now I am getting tired of buying routers and having them in some cases literally melt (we have been told that due to our online life and the way we use the net our demands on a consumer grade router is more than most can handle) 2 gaming pc's 3 servers, Xbox one, Ps4, Ps3, 10 mobile platforms (phones/tablets) Multiple TB transfers between systems daily and 18+ hours a day of heavy use.

Most of the current crop look like and act like they are more about style than substance, I mean both the nighthawk and new asus routers lead on a marketing campaign based around there looks.

So my idea is thus and if anyone has experience of it please chime in.
Hardware
4 port RJ45 Gigabit card like the startech
Ac 1900 wireless adapter

Those together will run me about £230 which may sound a lot but if I can configure my Windows 7 server (it has good quality firewall and virus protection) it should be able to act as one hell of a router.

First test (without buying anything using my old windows 7 laptop and its internal wireless adapter) By simply plugging my fibre modem into the laptop sharing connection and configuring the wireless adapter as a secure access point looks promising, as in the signal strength from my laptop was better and reached further to allow my wife to connect via her phone from the furthest point in our property and that was compared to an Asus RT AC87U £200 triband router signal.

Will post updates as to how successful this is, my plan is replace our router completely by the time we move house and use the server as a secure station.
Click to expand...

I dont know who told you that your internet usage is too much but i would doubt that. You dont have much more than i do on my home network but i have never had a router "melt".

What is your internet bandwidth? I assume you are not using standard ADSL or fibre cable. Also file transfers between devices on your local network shouldn't touch the router at all.
 
I am going from experience, over the last 12 years we have as a house hold gone through 13 modem/routers zyxel/technicolor/billion/asus/speedtouch/3com/netgear a draytek 2820 lasted for 5 years nothing else has lasted more than 6 months, one thing I did not expand on the mud deals with 40-100 people connecting to it from outside.

Some modem/routers like the TG refused to even last 5 minutes at full load (until set to bridge mode and an external router handling everything else)

As for issues with windows 7, I used to run Mandrake and other versions of Linux but have found windows 7 with minimal config can last 3 months between reboot and unlike most linux distros I tried a power drop or hardware crash caused almost no loss on windows 7 and yes we have a ups.
 
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Calranthe said:
I am going from experience, over the last 12 years we have as a house hold gone through 13 modem/routers zyxel/technicolor/billion/asus/speedtouch/3com/netgear a draytek 2820 lasted for 5 years nothing else has lasted more than 6 months, one thing I did not expand on the mud deals with 40-100 people connecting to it from outside.

Some modem/routers like the TG refused to even last 5 minutes at full load (until set to bridge mode and an external router handling everything else)

As for issues with windows 7, I used to run Mandrake and other versions of Linux but have found windows 7 with minimal config can last 3 months between reboot and unlike most linux distros I tried a power drop or hardware crash caused almost no loss on windows 7 and yes we have a ups.
Click to expand...

So your 12 years experience has caused you to ask a question on an open forum and you're disregarding the answers by insisting Windows 7 is a superior router?

Honestly you are far better splitting this out to a separate box, the Edgerouter Lite can do 1 million pps and if you spend more and go for the Edgerouter that can do 2 million pps. Way more than enough to handle your needs and connection requests with loads of overhead.

Set this aside from the fact Windows7 was never meant to be a routing operating system.
 
Calranthe said:
I am going from experience, over the last 12 years we have as a house hold gone through 13 modem/routers zyxel/technicolor/billion/asus/speedtouch/3com/netgear a draytek 2820 lasted for 5 years nothing else has lasted more than 6 months,
Click to expand...

Zyxel/Technicolor/Speedtouch are home routers without a doubt, 3Com haven't made routers for years, asus/netgear/billion are all home routers (albeit asus are high end, netgear/billion have high end/small business models). Draytek is the only product you have mentioned that is fit for purpose (i.e. a lower end business product).

Try looking at enterprise level kit e.g. Cisco/HP/Sonicwall/Juniper/Brocade/Watchguard/Sophos etc.


Calranthe said:
one thing I did not expand on the mud deals with 40-100 people connecting to it from outside.
Click to expand...

40-100 connections from outside is not an normal use case for any home router.

Calranthe said:
As for issues with windows 7, I used to run Mandrake and other versions of Linux but have found windows 7 with minimal config can last 3 months between reboot and unlike most linux distros I tried a power drop or hardware crash caused almost no loss on windows 7 and yes we have a ups.
Click to expand...

PFSense and other specific router distributions will run forever without a reboot - 3 months is nothing to be proud of (especially given the number of Security updates you have missed for Windows in 3 months?).

Personally just pick up an old Core2 based PC and run PFSense on it, stick a couple of used intel network cards (e.g. 1000PRO/PT) in there. You should only need 2 ports anyway (1 LAN/1 WAN), the rest of the PCs should be connected via a switch (i.e. meaning LAN transfers don't affect the router in any way). You are then free to get a couple of Wifi access points (e.g. Unify) rather than trying to run it all from a central point.
 
So far the higher end Asus routers have handled that kind of usage fine for me - once flashed to a performance firmware like Merlin's as they choke a bit on older stock firmwares.

Though their consumer routers aren't the best for heavy loads the Netgear dg834gt handled that kind of use for years though some did succumb to failure eventually, their higher end business stuff should handle it.

I have killed some consumer level network hardware from the likes of Belkin, 3Com, etc. with that kind of use but largely I'd suspect that the router wasn't getting enough ventilation or other less than ideal treatment if you are killing higher end stuff regularly.

EDIT: To reiterate what someone said above though don't buy startech for that kind of use - though they make cheap and cheerful stuff for mainstream use it will likely die sooner rather than later under actual enterprise level use - there is a reason they are half the price of a good intel adapter.
 
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The last router (last one from Asus I will touch) was the RT ac87u and with a merlin firmware (kept updated) it started to fail last week 5 months since I bought it.

Ventilation is not an issue I even had this one on a laptop cooler incase it might be that.
 
Weird :S I've a couple of NT66U that have been handling those kind of conditions for upto 4 years now without missing a beat.
 
joeyjojo said:
I was going to say the machine is overkill but if it's already always-on acting as a server then go for it! Get it to do DNS caching too (I use pdnsd), it's lovely.



What would you suggest, installing it in a VM? (OP is using Win 7 Pro.) Is that possible or safe?
Click to expand...

A VM would be an option I guess,would there be a way to shave off enough hardware resources to run a healthy pfsense install and be able to access windows both at the same time?

The OP says he has a number of drives in the machine.
 
Rroff said:
Weird :S I've a couple of NT66U that have been handling those kind of conditions for upto 4 years now without missing a beat.
Click to expand...

I have been using the same Asus for a number of years without any issues. My network has a Windows server, 6 desktop PC's, 4 laptops and 9 mobile devices (phones and tablets) on it but not all are in use at the same time. I also run Merlin firmware.
 
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