Old Computer As A Router? - Anybody tried?

p_a

Sep 26 2005, 09:07 PM

There are lots of possibilities of using old computers as routers.

If computerhas enough RAM (24 - 32 MB) it can be good router.

Just few Ethernet cards, Linuxoid software router installed and - it flies!

I tried, it works.

flyerdball

Sep 26 2005, 09:11 PM

QUOTE(p_a @ Sep 26 2005, 05:07 PM)

You mentioned the software router, what about installing a IP address block such as Peer Guardian 2? Peer Guardian 2 currently only runs on Windows, but the do have a link Here that is for linux and may work best for you situation.

alperuzi

Sep 27 2005, 01:54 AM

I've seen linux routers with much less ram than that... more like 2-4mb on a 386 CPU. Depends on how much you are routing, but this is more than enough for an average house.
You may also want to mention that setting up linux for this sort of thing requires good knowledge of the OS and being good at using the command prompt and editors like vi or emacs.

sobhan

Oct 2 2005, 02:56 PM

I tried it - my router is running on linux, it works great. I must say, that it can sweep web sites, and it is router. Thats great. You must try that.

no9t9

Oct 3 2005, 01:41 AM

Why would you spend money buying ethernet cards and wasting time "creating" a router out of an old computer? Why not just use the money you spent on ethernet cards to buy a real router? you can get decent routers with print servers and everything for like 10 bux now.

Elegost

Nov 10 2005, 01:36 AM

QUOTE(p_a @ Sep 26 2005, 02:07 PM)

It does work, i have also tried it on an older comp. The only problem is that its probably quite cheaper just to buy a router than a bunch of networking cards, and probably a few RAM upgrades...

selim

Nov 21 2005, 12:36 AM

I'm sure you can install a few HDDs and use it for network storage. Something a normal router can't do.

cardude

Nov 21 2005, 02:11 AM

Make sure you upgrade your network card! Don't use something that can only transfer 10 mb/s.

I don't know how fast your hdd's need to be either.

DeveloperX

Dec 21 2005, 10:52 AM

I tried it - my router is running on WinXP SP2 with 3 NIC, it works great. I must say, that it can sweep web sites, and it is router. Thats great. But sometimes very slowly and crashlyyy....javascript:emoticon('<_<')
smilie

Inspiron

Dec 21 2005, 04:16 PM

But why you wanna do that for a home or small network? I think these types of routers are considered quite powerful and to be used in super large networks, e.g. Microsoft Cooperation or NASA..

Otherwise a normal Cisco router can do the job.. It saves power and space as well..

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nirmaldaniel

May 26 2008, 06:29 AM

hey , look it is possible to do this and even this is possible in the case of a firewall by just using a Linux installed computer you can make it as a fire wall, but in all these cases in using a computer as an end device there are some problem , the thing is that if you use a computer as a router ,you will have just ethernet ports , but in a router there are many ports such as an serial ports etc which is highly difficult to configure manually in a computer ,

More over i dont know how did you configure the console port ? a console port is one which gives remote access to the computer and can you share the how your did that , i mean how you configured the console port mannually in the computer which acted like a router. ?

iGuest

May 9 2008, 11:41 PM

my isp only allows one computer to be connnected
Old Computer As A Router?

How can I use the computer connected to my ISP's internet connection to function as a router/switch to provide internet to other computers in my home. My ISP installs a code on on computer and that computer is the only one that will work when the cable is connected to it's nic card. When I connect the cable to a router it does not work either. So I was thinking if I can make the computer that the code is installed on into a router it should be able to provide internet to the other computers. IS THIS POSSIBLE?

-reply by frank

T100

Dec 27 2005, 03:42 PM

I tried to do that as well. My computer is a little bit old, with a Pentium II 400Mhz CPU and 256 MB of PC133 RAM. But this configuration is just barely enough for a small network. Perhaps it was my fault to install a Windows 2000 on it when I should actually be using Linux for a neater operating system, but the with the operating system, the computer is not able to withstand 2000+ concurrent sessions that it hung up when network traffic is high. I think the CPU power is the bottleneck in this situation. As I often have 3000+ concurrent sessions for a p2p network, I have to get a newer computer as a gateway. I bought a Celeron D 2.66Mhz with 512MB DDR400 Ram for the purpose. And now the computer is able to withstand the huge number of connections. I also have the firewall and antivirus program working all the time for security reason and with all those software, the CPU utilization is reasonable. A computer as gateway is very useful when you have to have a high number of connections. You have to get a number of crosslink wires, however. And you may have to configuration the old computer router through a slightly different interface, say VNC or remote control instead of the standard web base admin page from stand alone routers.

kdr_98

Dec 27 2005, 12:18 PM

Other pakkets I've tried are :

IPCOP (http://www.ipcop.org)
Clarkconnect (http://www.clarckconnect.org)
Smoothwall (http://www.smoothwall.org).

All those have a free and a paid version but require more hardware.
The install wit a GUI in a browser window.

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