After finally reaching the tipping point with off-the-shelf solutions that can't match increasing speeds available, we recently took the plunge. Building a homebrew router turned out to be a better proposition than we could've ever imagined. With nearly any speed metric we analyzed, our little DIY kit outpaced routers whether they were of the $90- or $250-variety.
Naturally, many readers asked the obvious follow-up—"How exactly can we put that together?" Today it's time to finally pull back the curtain and offer that walkthrough. By taking a closer look at the actual build itself (hardware and software), the testing processes we used, and why we used them, hopefully any Ars readers of average technical abilities will be able to put together their own DIY speed machine. And the good news? Everything is as open source as it gets—the equipment, the processes, and the setup. If you want the DIY router we used, you can absolutely have it. This will be the guide to lead you, step-by-step.
What is a router, anyway?
At its most basic, a router is just a device that accepts packets on one interface and forwards them on to another interface that gets those packets closer to their eventual destination. That's not what most of us are really thinking when we think of "a router" in the sense of something we'll plug into our home or office to get to the Internet, though. What do we need to have before any homebrew device looks like a router?
For most of us, the important bits will be routing, NAT, DHCP, and DNS. In this build, we'll use the same free and open source implementations of these technologies that power huge chunks of the Internet infrastructure itself.
Routing
This one's easy—the Linux kernel itself handles it for us without any additional software. We're not looking for any complex multiple-route stuff that would need Border Gateway Protocol or the like, so we can basically just enable forwarding between interfaces, set up a few rules to tell us when not to forward between interfaces, and call it a day.
Continue reading about the Router Hardware here:
The Ars guide to building a Linux router from scratch
Naturally, many readers asked the obvious follow-up—"How exactly can we put that together?" Today it's time to finally pull back the curtain and offer that walkthrough. By taking a closer look at the actual build itself (hardware and software), the testing processes we used, and why we used them, hopefully any Ars readers of average technical abilities will be able to put together their own DIY speed machine. And the good news? Everything is as open source as it gets—the equipment, the processes, and the setup. If you want the DIY router we used, you can absolutely have it. This will be the guide to lead you, step-by-step.
What is a router, anyway?
At its most basic, a router is just a device that accepts packets on one interface and forwards them on to another interface that gets those packets closer to their eventual destination. That's not what most of us are really thinking when we think of "a router" in the sense of something we'll plug into our home or office to get to the Internet, though. What do we need to have before any homebrew device looks like a router?
For most of us, the important bits will be routing, NAT, DHCP, and DNS. In this build, we'll use the same free and open source implementations of these technologies that power huge chunks of the Internet infrastructure itself.
Routing
This one's easy—the Linux kernel itself handles it for us without any additional software. We're not looking for any complex multiple-route stuff that would need Border Gateway Protocol or the like, so we can basically just enable forwarding between interfaces, set up a few rules to tell us when not to forward between interfaces, and call it a day.
Continue reading about the Router Hardware here:
The Ars guide to building a Linux router from scratch
