[HN Gopher] How to build a Linux-based wireless router out of sp...
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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.
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