# Building my own router?



## Kantastic (Jun 2, 2012)

I've been looking for a replacement for my Linksys router for a while now, and have decided to pursue my own little side project of building a router using some low-powered parts. If this project does become realized, I've decided on basing it on Intel's Atom family of processors, which research has told me would be overkill for a basic home router.

I just need to know some of the pros, cons, incompatibilities, and potential hiccups of building one versus buying one. I can get a fairly decent one for what it would likely cost me to build one, but money aside, I feel this would be a great learning experience.


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## de.das.dude (Jun 2, 2012)

why not use an old P4 computer?

that would be cheap no?


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## Kantastic (Jun 2, 2012)

de.das.dude said:


> why not use an old P4 computer?
> 
> that would be cheap no?



The Atom build would draw significantly less power, and have a significantly smaller footprint. I plan on putting this router where my current one is, on the windowsill.


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## Easy Rhino (Jun 2, 2012)

well for a fun project it is a good idea, but completely impractical. You are basically building an entire PC with a bunch of ethernet ports to simply do 1 task.


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## Kantastic (Jun 2, 2012)

Easy Rhino said:


> well for a fun project it is a good idea, but completely impractical. You are basically building an entire PC with a bunch of ethernet ports to simply do 1 task.



Would it be able to handle torrents or p2p applications better than my current one? I have connection that's usually faster than what I paid for (10/1):






Every time my parents open up PPTV or PPStream (both p2p streaming software), my ping skyrockets in games and streams. I was hoping a more capable router would fix the issue, and instead of dishing out $150 for one, I'd rather put one together for around the same price.


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## Frick (Jun 2, 2012)

I did it once and used Freesco. It worked quite good but as Easy Rhino said it was completely impractical.

And that issue could be resolved with QoS settings I think which is avaliable in cheaper routers as well.


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## Beertintedgoggles (Jun 2, 2012)

Instead of using a bunch of ethernet cards for the connections couldn't you just use two (a WAN port and LAN out) a switch and some DHCP server software to do the IP assignments?


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## de.das.dude (Jun 2, 2012)

Beertintedgoggles said:


> Instead of using a bunch of ethernet cards for the connections couldn't you just use two (a WAN port and LAN out) a switch and some DHCP server software to do the IP assignments?



or buy a new router


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## W1zzard (Jun 2, 2012)

i'm using a linux machine in my basement as router. some cheap amd cpu and a normal size case with a bunch of HDDs so i can use it as NAS, too. 

You dont need multiple network cards. A switch and 1 ethernet port is enough.


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 2, 2012)

Kantastic said:


> Every time my parents open up PPTV or PPStream (both p2p streaming software), my ping skyrockets in games and streams. I was hoping a more capable router would fix the issue, and instead of dishing out $150 for one, I'd rather put one together for around the same price.



Disable uploading of the stream, and your ping probably wont rise anymore 

Roadrunner is very very upload unfriendly.


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## Frick (Jun 2, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> i'm using a linux machine in my basement as router. some cheap amd cpu and a normal size case with a bunch of HDDs so i can use it as NAS, too.
> 
> You dont need multiple network cards. A switch and 1 ethernet port is enough.



If you make it multipurpose it makes more sense, but still. Cheaper routers have USB ports nowadays anyway. They're not good for streaming movies and such but for basic stuff they're good.


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## Kantastic (Jun 2, 2012)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> Disable uploading of the stream, and your ping probably wont rise anymore
> 
> Roadrunner is very very upload unfriendly.



I always thought it was a router issue rather than it being a fault with my connection. I recall both PPStream and PPTV not having the option to disable the upload speed, though I can try out 3rd party software and see if that helps.

My house usually has 4 computers actively surfing the web, with 3 out of 4 streaming videos (2 of the 3 using p2p software that forces users to upload content they've streamed). I'm not sure how well my 3 year old WRT160N is holding up.

Will I see any benefit in building an Atom-based router? I could probably get away with a dual core Atom, 2GB RAM, a small 30GB SSD, and some junk case for under $100. If I had to buy one, I'm not paying more than $50-$70, but I'm allowing a much larger budget if I'm building one.

How many ethernet cards do I need anyway? Only a single desktop is hard-wired to the router, the other 2 laptops and 2 desktops in the house are wireless. I'll need 2 ethernet ports if I include the modem.


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## remixedcat (Jun 2, 2012)

PFSense is an excellent router distro.


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 2, 2012)

Kantastic said:


> I always thought it was a router issue rather than it being a fault with my connection. I recall both PPStream and PPTV not having the option to disable the upload speed, though I can try out 3rd party software and see if that helps.
> 
> Will I see any benefit in building an Atom-based router? I could probably get away with a dual core Atom, 2GB RAM, a small 30GB SSD, and some junk case for under $100. If I had to buy one, I'm not paying more than $50-$70, but I'm allowing a much larger budget if I'm building one.


http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Linksys_WRT150N_&_WRT160N

Try DD-WRT before wasting time on an x86 router IMO. 



> My house usually has 4 computers actively surfing the web, with 3 out of 4 streaming videos (2 of the 3 using p2p software that forces users to upload content they've streamed). I'm not sure how well my 3 year old WRT160N is holding up.



Streaming and web browsing is download, not up. Cable is specifically really good at pumping data down, but uploading will cause you to bottleneck. Hence the .98mbit up on the benchmark. Try uploading a video to youtube, and watch your download speed test just die.

I'm willing to bet your WRT160N isn't the issue. DD-WRT may give you much better performance though, since Ciscos default firmware is pretty awful.


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## Kantastic (Jun 2, 2012)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Linksys_WRT150N_&_WRT160N
> 
> Try DD-WRT before wasting time on an x86 router IMO.
> 
> ...



I have a v2 router.


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## Zen_ (Jun 3, 2012)

I have been using Zeroshell on an old Athlon XP box for awhile with DD-WRT AP's for wireless. DD-WRT is more than adequate for the network services most people need, but if you want a more advanced firewall, radius authentication, QoS, VPN and DNS capabilities, something like Zeroshell is fun to play with. There is an MSI mini-ITX board with a 500 MHz Geode and dual gbit nic's available on eBay for about $40 that is actually ideal for this sort of thing.


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## newtekie1 (Jun 3, 2012)

Kantastic said:


> I always thought it was a router issue rather than it being a fault with my connection. I recall both PPStream and PPTV not having the option to disable the upload speed, though I can try out 3rd party software and see if that helps.
> 
> My house usually has 4 computers actively surfing the web, with 3 out of 4 streaming videos (2 of the 3 using p2p software that forces users to upload content they've streamed). I'm not sure how well my 3 year old WRT160N is holding up.
> 
> ...



Can you build one with an Atom?  Yes, but it isn't practical.  You would need 2 network cards, one for the WAN and one for the LAN. If you want more wired ports, you could just use a switch.  If you want wireless you would either need a Wireless Access Point(you could use your old router for this) or a wireless card in the router computer itself.  Then of course there is the issue of network card compatibility.  A lot of the free software out there, like PFSense, support a limited set of network cards, and the onboard card isn't supported often in my experience.

As for your ping issues, I can almost certainly assure you it is an issue with your upload bandwidth being saturated.  Once the bandwidth is saturated, all traffic has to queue up, so when a ping is sent out, it has to wait behind the other traffic to go through the pipe, and hence the ping is extremely high.  A 1Mb/s upload speed isn't very fast.

QoS is definitely what you want to do.  Figure out the upload ports that the P2P programs use and limit their bandwidth to next to nothing(so it still looks like they are uploading, but they use next to no bandwidth).

If I was in your situation, I'd pick up a $60 E3000, and install TomatoUSB, then use that to easily set up some QoS rules for the ports used by the P2P program to limit the amount of upload bandwidth they use.


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## Mussels (Jun 3, 2012)

while i understand the purpose of the project is for fun, a router/AP with bandwidth shaping controls would solve your latency/spiking issues. i get a 15/1Mb connection here, and i just shape each IP address so it cant upload more than 256Kb/s at any one time. solves all our issues, since it makes the uploading machine lag instead of everyone (and thus, teaches the lagger a lesson )


edit: i run four routers here (hey, i'm a nerd OK?) and all three of my TP links have per IP (or per IP range) bandwidth shaping, that makes custom firmwares seem useless in comparison. QoS has never solved my lag spiking problems with P2P apps, whereas hard speed limits have.


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## Kantastic (Jun 3, 2012)

newtekie1 said:


> QoS is definitely what you want to do.  Figure out the upload ports that the P2P programs use and limit their bandwidth to next to nothing(so it still looks like they are uploading, but they use next to no bandwidth).
> 
> If I was in your situation, I'd pick up a $60 E3000, and install TomatoUSB, then use that to easily set up some QoS rules for the ports used by the P2P program to limit the amount of upload bandwidth they use.



My WRT160N doesn't support advanced QoS, the most I can do is set the application's priority to low, medium, normal, or high. I'm afraid that by setting it to low I would hinder the download speed as well, and that wouldn't sit too well with both my parents who use PPS/PPTV (p2p software based on BT).

I've been rethinking building my own router, especially after getting so much advice swaying me away from the idea. I guess when time comes, I'll be wiser and choose a more capable router or one that supports DDR-WT or Tomato. The damn WRT160N just won't die! I've been waiting for it to crap out for a year and a half now. IIRC, I got it from Best Buy when I was a sophomore in high school; I'm about to be a sophomore in college. The damn thing just won't die!

Would an application that limits upload speed via Windows work to salvage my connection whilst the computers are streaming?


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## Mussels (Jun 3, 2012)

Kantastic said:


> Would an application that limits upload speed via Windows work to salvage my connection whilst the computers are streaming?



only if you limit the upload on each device thats causing the lag. so if they stream/P2P on three machines, those three machines are what needs the uploads limited. far easier to do it in your router.


big edit:

Heres the router i have in my room (i use it in wifi client mode as a wifi bridge, but its a full router/AP as well)

TP-LINK TL-WR743ND Wireless AP/Client Router



heres how my network is setup:
the 192.168.3.2-10 range is my PC/phone/laptop, etc. the rest is what DHCP assigns (100+) for everyone else.





unlike software solutions, this works for consoles, web enabled BD players, phones, etc.


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## Kantastic (Jun 3, 2012)

Mussels said:


> only if you limit the upload on each device thats causing the lag. so if they stream/P2P on three machines, those three machines are what needs the uploads limited. far easier to do it in your router.
> 
> 
> big edit:
> ...



My router doesn't offer those options, and I'm unfortunate to have bought the only version of this router to not have 3rd party firmware support. Typical Kantastic luck.

Nobody in the household owns a smartphone or tablet at the moment, I haven't owned a console since the N64, and no computers aside from the HTPC and the guest/family computers use similar BT-based software. Though my parents have been contemplating getting something called a TVPad (uses the same chip in the iPhone 4) which runs a custom version of Android and acts like a media center (streams Chinese channels using the same PPS/PPTV or similar software, but wrapped up in a nice shell/GUI), so if it comes to that, I'll need a new router.

It's usually my father watching something on one computer and my mother watching something else on the other. I'm going to limit both computers to 100Kbps and see how things are for the next couple days. Fortunately, I'm upgrading both of the computers to SSDs (about time every single computer went solid state), so the extra software needing to load upon boot won't cause much of a decrease in boot time. 

My folks are a handful when it comes to computers. They whine about it being 'slow', but yell at me every time I do a slight upgrade.


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## Mussels (Jun 3, 2012)

Kantastic said:


> My router doesn't offer those options, and I'm unfortunate to have bought the only version of this router to not have 3rd party firmware support. Typical Kantastic luck.
> 
> Nobody in the household owns a smartphone or tablet at the moment, I haven't owned a console since the N64, and no computers aside from the HTPC and the guest/family computers use similar BT-based software.
> 
> ...



you said you had a 10/1Mb line earlier. 1Mb is 128KB/s. you'd need to limit them lower.


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## Kantastic (Jun 3, 2012)

Mussels said:


> you said you had a 10/1Mb line earlier. 1Mb is 128KB/s. you'd need to limit them lower.



The b/B conversion always gets me, but I'll get that figured out. Though I have to ask, what do you recommend I drop it to so it won't adversely affect general usage? And yes, my connection is 10/1, but it's normally 15/1 (if that matters at all).


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## Mussels (Jun 3, 2012)

Kantastic said:


> The b/B conversion always gets me, but I'll get that figured out. Though I have to ask, what do you recommend I drop it to so it won't adversely affect general usage? And yes, my connection is 10/1, but it's normally 15/1.



i'd say about 30-40KB/s per machine. you can over provision a little (EG, 3 machines at 40KB/s and a 100KB/s line) because the odds are, all 3 machines wont upload at the same time.


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## Completely Bonkers (Jun 3, 2012)

Running your own router box is a nice thing to do. There is a pleasure in the DIY aspect that "buy the cheapest box" doesnt quite hit.  So I'm with you... build a small overkill box for the sake of DIY project and learning something out of the experience.

DONT use an old P4. Huge waste of power. I'd recommend a modern Atom (not the first ones, the new ones have far faster and far lower power chipsets), or a VIA industrial board, or one of those AMD netbox processors.

If you dont linux or Windows, then also consider Ubiquiti. I use both DDWRT and ubiquiti, and I prefer www.ubnt.com.


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## Mindweaver (Jun 3, 2012)

I like my atom boards, but why not use something like *Raspberry Pi*?  you could use 1 usb network adapters and onboard for both connections.


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## acerace (Jun 3, 2012)

Honestly, I kinda like this project.


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## Aquinus (Jun 3, 2012)

Mindweaver said:


> I like my atom boards, but why not use something like *Raspberry Pi*?  you could use 1 usb network adapters and onboard for both connections.



That is actually what I wanted to do with my RaspberryPi once Newark gets their ducks in a row and ships it. 

A clean Ubuntu server install along with netfilter/iptables, dhcp, and bind you should be able to setup a router fairly quickly if you have some experience configuring dhcp and bind on linux, and even bind isn't necessary unless you want to run DNS locally but I would start with DHCP and netfilter.


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## bpgt64 (Jun 3, 2012)

I would check out pfsense, its a freebsd off chute that is incredbly customizable.  The qos feature set is pretty incredible..


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## v12dock (Jun 3, 2012)

+1 for pfSense its a rock solid OS I prefer it over my old DDWrt router

I am using a P4 @ 1.5 Ghz with 384mb of ram. I have no problems routing with those specs.

I also have two 10/100 nics for WAN and LAN


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## Kantastic (Jun 3, 2012)

Sorry guys, this project is officially put on hold unless limiting the upload speed doesn't solve the lag issues, or the almost-5-years-old WRT160N I'm currently using dies. I've limited the upload speed of the 2 computers already, so I'm giving it 3-5 days to see how things are.

Thanks for all the help & advice.


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## Zen_ (Jun 3, 2012)

Here's that MSI Geode board...

I think this is pretty cool because it has a CompactFlash interface and 2x gbit NICs, and of course mini-ITX is a standard size so you can use readily available cases and PSU's. This seems ideal for use with pfSense or Zeroshell. I know that Zeroshell can also be used as a wireless AP with an Atheros based wireless card.


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## bpgt64 (Jun 7, 2012)

Zen_ said:


> Here's that MSI Geode board...
> 
> I think this is pretty cool because it has a CompactFlash interface and 2x gbit NICs, and of course mini-ITX is a standard size so you can use readily available cases and PSU's. This seems ideal for use with pfSense or Zeroshell. I know that Zeroshell can also be used as a wireless AP with an Atheros based wireless card.



The same for Pfsense.  I am running a 801.11g network using a 20 dollar Atheros card from amazon.com.  My build's a little more industrial though.  I use a 8gb SSD with 2 Gbs of ram, in this kit...

SUPERMICRO SYS-5015A-H 1U Intel Atom 330 Dual-Core...


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## Mussels (Jun 8, 2012)

i used to run PFsense actually, then i got my router with its bandwidth controls and gave up. PFsense is nice, but for the scale of most home users its not worth it.


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## Zen_ (Jun 9, 2012)

It's a nice toy for people interested in networking, and I think as home networks grow there is a need for more sophisticated resource management and security than a $50 wi-fi AP offers.


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## Solaris17 (Jun 9, 2012)

i was going to actually going to advise maybe a SOC setup like VIA but the geode line as mentioned is a good idea. I honestly forgot it existed. if you feel like wating you could even blow the $30 and try raspberry pi and a switch.


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## Aquinus (Jun 9, 2012)

Solaris17 said:


> i was going to actually going to advise maybe a SOC setup like VIA but the geode line as mentioned is a good idea. I honestly forgot it existed. if you feel like wating you could even blow the $30 and try raspberry pi and a switch.



My Pi is on the way, and I was thinking of trying to use it as a router. It's certainly powerful enough to do it (it is more powerful than most routers.)


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## <<Onafets>> (Jun 10, 2012)

I use Untangled on my P4 box but I'm migrating my config to Smoothwall  Works excellently and I refuse to touch another home router at my place unless I have a very good reason to do so.


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## digibucc (Jun 10, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> You dont need multiple network cards. A switch and 1 ethernet port is enough.



exactly


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## Aquinus (Jun 10, 2012)

digibucc said:


> exactly



One? If it is acting as a gateway and you want all internet traffic to go through it wouldn't you need two network adapters? One for the external connection to the interwebs and another to your switch and maybe a wireless adapter if you want to broadcast Wi-Fi off of your gateway. If you're only connected to your network with one interface, then the device isn't a gateway, you still need the internet to come in from somewhere.


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 10, 2012)

Aquinus said:


> One? If it is acting as a gateway and you want all internet traffic to go through it wouldn't you need two network adapters? One for the external connection to the interwebs and another to your switch and maybe a wireless adapter if you want to broadcast Wi-Fi off of your gateway. If you're only connected to your network with one interface, then the device isn't a gateway, you still need the internet to come in from somewhere.



Not if you are utilizing NAT(Which may not even be necessary..). All traffic goes through the gateway and is translated out. OS's can handle multiple networks on the same interface. (So very handy when you connect directly to a device and everything is static.)
i.e.
IN -> 192.x.x.x:XXYY
router magic
OUT-> 24.x.x.x:XXZZ

(This actually just modifies the IP and MAC headers, using a port table to determine what to replace the MAC with on the LAN.)

so when a packet comes in it does this: INTERNET-> 24.24.24.24:25505 GW MAC -> Switch -> GW -> GW looks up what port 25505 forwards to -> Changes destination headers -> Switch-> Destination

Bonus points for guessing the port!


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## Aquinus (Jun 10, 2012)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> Not if you are utilizing NAT(Which may not even be necessary..). All traffic goes through the gateway and is translated out. OS's can handle multiple networks on the same interface. (So very handy when you connect directly to a device and everything is static.)
> i.e.
> IN -> 192.x.x.x:XXYY
> router magic
> ...



That doesn't work though because now you have your modem and gateway on the same network. The point of having a gateway is to be able to restrict and redirect traffic to different machines, that defeats the purpose if they can just connect directly to the modem. Also as a system admin, that is a security hole the size of the moon because any traffic that enters you network will already be in your network because your gateway doesn't segregate the two networks.

So all in all, yeah, you can make it work but if you actually did this in production...






You should never setup a real network like that, it is one thing if you have multiple subnets on the same interface, it is another when you're connecting to a completely different network on the same interface which I'm not convinced will work well if you do get it working to begin with. You really need that 2nd interface dedicated to the internet.


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 10, 2012)

Aquinus said:


> That doesn't work though because now you have your modem and gateway on the same network. The point of having a gateway is to be able to restrict and redirect traffic to different machines, that defeats the purpose if they can just connect directly to the modem. Also as a system admin, that is a security hole the size of the moon because any traffic that enters you network will already be in your network because your gateway doesn't segregate the two networks.
> You should never setup a real network like that, it is one thing if you have multiple subnets on the same interface, it is another when you're connecting to a completely different network on the same interface which I'm not convinced will work well if you do get it working to begin with. You really need that 2nd interface dedicated to the internet.



Really? Have you ever actually configured a switch? I'm talking a real switch, not a hub. The switch sees all traffic from the modem (which will often times only give 1 IP, not multiple) and sends it to the gateway (usually a router for folks), and the gateway sends it out. There won't be any "packet confusion" because you're using a layer 2 switch, not a hub.

Otherwise, my single switch thats sitting next to me running a whole collection of networks must clearly not be working.

(You DO have to use an internal network IP, such as 10.10.x.x or 192.168.x.x, because they are not routable over the internet, hence why its not really a security issue. you cannot ping 192.168.34.1 over the internet.)

The big catch with this configuration would be your router needs to not give out DHCP to anyone but the server, and all your clients have to be directly pointed to the gateway manually. The bigger security threat would actually lie from within your network, not from the internet. For home use, its not really an issue. For a business LAN, you would obviously want to configure it differently, but it would certainly work. Worst case at home would be a laptop connecting and be set to DHCP, and just conflict with your gateway causing your internet to stop working until you fix it.

Its not ideal, but it would certainly work. Worst case, the ISP's first in line router will start filtering your broadcasts. You would want a switch you can tell not to FWD broadcasts through that specific port.





A second NIC to flow traffic through would only change your available bandwidth (if everything is gigabit, you still have plenty with a single), and you would have the computer filtering broadcasts instead of the switch. The cable modem/DSL modem will never even know a computer is on the same physical network.

If you were to custom format your IP headers, you could potentially attack the computer from the outside network, by changing the MAC address in the header to that of the client; but discovering it wouldn't be easy, and the computer would just be like "oh this packet isn't for me /trash because it has the wrong IP address." (The internal network IP would negate your ability to traverse the internet for this type of attack.)



> it is one thing if you have multiple subnets on the same interface, it is another when you're connecting to a completely different network


This statement contradicts itself. A different subnet is a completely different network.


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## Aquinus (Jun 10, 2012)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> Really? Have you ever actually configured a switch? I'm talking a real switch, not a hub. The switch sees all traffic from the modem (which will often times only give 1 IP, not multiple) and sends it to the gateway (usually a router for folks), and the gateway sends it out. There won't be any "packet confusion" because you're using a layer 2 switch, not a hub.
> 
> Otherwise, my single switch thats sitting next to me running a whole collection of networks must clearly not be working.
> 
> ...



...and all of this could be avoided by adding a second network device. It just over complicates it. A subnet is just division of IP ranges to determine what hosts can talk to what, where the router handles communication between subnets, I know all of this and I applogize for not explaining myself better, I'm a programmer not an journalist damn it! 

The point I'm trying to make is that for the average user, having two interfaces is ideal because unless you really need to forwards ports to a particular machine or do some special routing, sticking with DHCP and having a network that is plug and play is much more preferable to having one where you have to manually configure each host.

I'm just saying it's not practical unless you're aware of every computer that is going to exist on the network.

Personally, I prefer to let DHCP manage my static IPs. That way if I have a machine that dual boots, I still get the same IP regardless of the OS or configuration. I like having one place that impacts everything, at least for network management.


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 10, 2012)

Aquinus said:


> The point I'm trying to make is that for the average user, having two interfaces is ideal because unless you really need to forwards ports to a particular machine or do some special routing, sticking with DHCP and having a network that is plug and play is much more preferable to having one where you have to manually configure each host.
> 
> I'm just saying it's not practical unless you're aware of every computer that is going to exist on the network.
> 
> Personally, I prefer to let DHCP manage my static IPs. That way if I have a machine that dual boots, I still get the same IP regardless of the OS or configuration. I like having one place that impacts everything, at least for network management.



You _can*_ still run DHCP on this network. This is actually how I have my network here set up (for my personal use). My router acts as a wireless extension of my wired network. (I also have some Cisco routers sitting around with a single ethernet port. How do you explain this?  )

Every computer on my network is still DHCP. I jsut manually assigned my MAC's in the router to be given X ip address. My minecraft server is still the same IP address even if I boot over into Debian.

The only real gotchya is making sure you don't get broadcast storms. If you're to the point of having a software router running, it really isn't any more complex. If you can barely handle plugging in a linksys router and getting the defaults running, a software solution is NOT for you regardless of # of NIC's used.

*with a consumer modem, you just have to restrict it broadcasting its own DHCP.


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## v12dock (Jun 10, 2012)

oh god not packet tracer...


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## Aquinus (Jun 11, 2012)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> *with a consumer modem, you just have to restrict it broadcasting its own DHCP.



I don't know about your internet, but mine is dynamic and requires DHCP, using static won't work once the DHCP lease times out, because the ISP will try to assign it to someone else. I also don't have a Cisco switch laying around to use and neither do most people.


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 11, 2012)

Aquinus said:


> I don't know about your internet, but mine is dynamic and requires DHCP, using static won't work once the DHCP lease times out, because the ISP will try to assign it to someone else. I also don't have a Cisco switch laying around to use and neither do most people.



mid-range switches are configurable. I have a little 26 port NetGear 10/100 with 2 gigabit ports that I can webcfg into. You don't have to have a $1000 catalyst for basic networking configurability. Most people don't have _switches_ laying around at all unless they do networking, though*(So you wont be using a soft router anyways..)*. Old routers can provide this functionality (especially if you can put DD-WRT on it )

Technically you could also use a hub(with a dual NIC config), but... just no...




v12dock said:


> oh god not packet tracer...




The latest version of Packet Tracer (5.3) is actually really good for learning and planning.


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## Solaris17 (Jun 11, 2012)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> mid-range switches are configurable. I have a little 26 port NetGear 10/100 with 2 gigabit ports that I can webcfg into. You don't have to have a $1000 catalyst for basic networking configurability. Most people don't have _switches_ laying around at all unless they do networking, though*(So you wont be using a soft router anyways..)*. Old routers can provide this functionality (especially if you can put DD-WRT on it )
> 
> Technically you could also use a hub(with a dual NIC config), but... just no...
> 
> ...



i do i have a fiber and ethernet switch lying around...............


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## remixedcat (Jun 11, 2012)

Layer 3 switches


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