[nycbug-talk] soho router options (soekris?)

[bruno]

> I'm looking to replace my home-office soho type router.  For a long 
> time I've used an ADSL 'router' provided by my ISP, which basically 
> does NAT and DHCP, and does it quite simply and reliably.  With that, 
> this thing is aging, and perhaps dying after a few years of solid 
> service- and I'm looking at options...
> 
> Biggest requirement: the router must simply run, with as little 
> ike-interaction as possible, as not to disrupt my other regular work.
> 
> Option Ideas:
> 
> 1) Soekris/OpenBSD/pf-NAT:
> I'd love to rock out with a soekris box, and OpenBSD is 
> luscious/fun/obvious for a router/firewall, BUT, since I work from 
> home, I can't have any downtime managing the thing by myself- and don't 
> really sanely seeing myself making time to mess around- (I have other 
> code and sw to work with for work and pleasure...)  Also, to ensure it 
> stays up, (as I'm not sure I trust myself yet to run the little 
> buggers, they're quite different than the servers I'm used to), I'd be 
> inclined to buy two of them- so the price goes up for this simple task 
> for me...  I'd really love to do some Soekris for the sake of it, but I 
> really just don't have time to go there right now...

In case you opt for this one, they are stable and do stay up, I've been
running OpenBSD 3.1 since it came out. It was a little time consuming
at that time, I had to hack a laptop and made my own .iso to install
from the laptop on the CF, which is only 64MB because they were a
little expensive then. But these days, you should be able to PXEboot
and install the regular way (10 min?). Unless you have a complex setup,
pf should be simple, you might get away with just a few lines. I have
not touched it since (about 3 years or more?), except to add/remove an
IP to be allowed to go out, open/close a port, and so on. It just
works. Another nice thing is a serial console, so I don't have to run
sshd on it. They are not that much different from any server, I don't
think.

bruno
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