I’m torn and I need the advice of people smarter then I do figure this one out.
I have an old Microsoft Router, MN-700 I believe … bought it from Joe Morgan about two years ago, and it’s served me well, likely can continue to do so as a wireless access point. But, I’m now using the heck out of it for torrents and more heavy-access type applications, and it’s not holding up terribly well, crashes 1-2 times a week.
So, my new thought process is to do one of two things:
Option 1: Buy a new hardware router
Option 2: Build a Linux distribution and let it do the hard work.
I would love thoughts from everyone as to the best thing to do, it’s greatly appreciated! The computer I would use for the Linux setup would be a P4 1.7 GHZ, 1 GB RAM, 20 GB boot drive and a pair of 80 gig drives, striped NTFS in Windows now. I wouldn’t mind striping them in Linux either.
2 Responses to New Router: Linux or Hardware?
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If you’re not wanting to spend a lot of money get a WRT54G v4 or a WRT54GS v3 (I think at least) you can install a Linux distribution as firmware (dd-wrt) in place of the Linksys firmware. Works great and I’ve not had it crash often and if you know me, torrent constantly.-
Why not do both? Linksys used to have a router called the WRT54G which has an on-board Linux. The nice thing about hardware routers is that they generate no noise, and they are low power devices. With the WRT54G, you can flash it with other firmware. I believe Linksys replaced the WRT54G with a VxWorks kernel. The newest version with the Linux software still intact is the WRT54GL. More information here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WRT54G
Hope this helps!