best distro for a router?

FliesLikeABrick · 08-12-2005, 11:38 AM

I'm looking into using a spare 1U I have as a router in my house (for some more advanced routing abilities than my linksys now, more port forwarding records, bandwidth monitoring, etc etc)

What is the best distro to use on a router, from the vast experience of all of you? Feel free to throw in any other information you think might be helpful in setting up a router.

The 1U is currently 533 mhz celeron

with 256 MB RAM but i plan to upgrade the RAM, as well as the processor if possible.

Matir · 08-12-2005, 11:50 AM

A 533MHz Celeron with 256 RAM should handle home network routing without a problem (unless, of course, you have a T3 at your house). I run a 333 PII for my router.

My router runs Debian, though I intend to switch it to Gentoo soon. If you're relatively familiar with Linux and you want the router to do more than JUST firewall (such as bw monitoring) you'd probably want to stay away from distros like Smoothwall.

Debian's pretty stable and doesn't force a GUI on you. Gentoo's the same way.

FliesLikeABrick · 08-12-2005, 03:26 PM

alright. i'm relatively familiar with ubuntu and like it quite a bit, so debian should work out well.

Any reccomendations on software to use for routing, firewalling and bw monitoring, or other distros?

i look forward to playing with this

Matir · 08-12-2005, 03:29 PM

routing and firewalling should be handled by the standard iptables. You can grab a script like firestarter to help you out if you need. bw monitoring... I've heard good things about iptraf, but have never used it myself.

FliesLikeABrick · 08-12-2005, 03:32 PM

hm, iptraf might work, but im not sure if that would tell me statistics broken down by client computer and stuff

Matir · 08-12-2005, 03:36 PM

mrtg might. There's a wealth of software on freshmeat and sourceforge.