PC Routers

[Anthony de Boer]

D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> Another approach I've wondered about is using a commodity consumer
> router + OpenWRT as a multiplexor/demultiplexor for a little PC.  The little PC
> would use the vlan capability of the router to direct packets out any
> of the (likely 4) LAN ports on the router.  (I think that we may have 
> chatted about this.)

In theory, a WRT54GL can be configured with each of its five Ethernet
ports on a different segment, and ISTR is even capable of configuring
802.1q trunking, which would let you configure four virtual interfaces
across a trunk cable from a Linux box to talk to four segments, using the
Linksys as a bridge.  However, with OpenWRT or such, the Linksys is a
configurable Linux box in its own right, and I'd be more likely to do the
actual routing there, unless there was some application involving a full
BGP table or such that actually needed the big Linux box.

Back at the ISP I used to help run, when we needed a lot of ports we
could load up a Linux box with five 4-port PCI NICs, though later on the
other strategy was to use 802.1q and have VLAN-capable switches peeling
off the requisite ports halfway across the datacentre.

A decent PC with a few quality NICs, running Linux and Zebra/Quagga, made
a very good backbone router, and you could configure redundant pairs of
them for less than the cost of one name-brand router.

-- 
Anthony de Boer
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