Friday, March 25, 2005
DIY PROJECTS :: Save Your Cash, Build Your Own Router!
You've had it with that old crappy router that someone gave to you when they upgraded. It's a pain to configure, it dumps its settings mysteriously and without warning, and you can't even get it to update an external DNS database so you can remote connect to your PC when your ISP rotates your modem's IP address.
You've also had it with mom giving you hell about all that extra hardware you've got laying around the place, collecting dust. She does have a point. If you've got the guts for a complete computer system lingering around the joint, why not put them to use, shut mom the hell up, and replace that p.o.s. router all at the same time?
Let's see, there's an old Dell PC over there. It's a crappy little Pentium II processor, but you added some memory to it a while back. The hard drive's not all that big, maybe a few gigs. What you didn't realize before was that that crappy old Dell machine is simply perfect for a renewed usefulness as your incredibly flexible and powerful new router! Smack in a second network card, hook up a switch where your router used to be, and the hardware side of things are complete!
Now how to program this thing? How do you turn a complete computer system into something as mundane and everyday as a router? Sure, it runs Windows 98 pretty good, but there's no way to make THAT into any kind of kickass NAT box.
My friend, your troubles are over! Linux is going to save you. Ah ah ah, don't you DARE go cringing and making with the yuck face. You don't really have to understand how to program (or even install) Linux to make this project work. All it takes is to download a quick .iso, burn it to CD, and boot the machine from it.
Clark Connect is based on Red Hat 7.3, but again, you will rarely see the evidence of the Linux OS eyecandy that is common on most desktop installs. This is strictly console-level baby. Command line goodness. Well, there is a rudimentary gui that will help you get setup, but after the basic configuration, you will have the ability to configure the rest through a browser on a machine connected through the network to the router box.
The neatest thing about Clark Connect? It has much better logging capabilities than a standard one-piece router, can do intrusion detection (snort), act as a webserver, provide squid proxy caching (which causes sites you've visited before to load much faster), work as a mailserver and even let you connect to the router machine directly through Windows Network Neighborhood as a Samba-shared machine! Holy crap!
So Mick Nobody and I (well actually just him, I donated the hardware) set up a router box, using Clark Connect on a Dell Optiplex GXa, Pentium II 266MHz, 128MB RAM machine. The setup was a little hairy at first, but we neglected a couple of things that we should have gotten straight in the first place. For one thing, we had the internet cable and the internal network cables in the wrong respective network cards. We also forgot to reboot the cable modem (so it would now pay attention to the new network card it was connected to). Once those problems were fixed though, the whole thing took off like a shot.
Now there is another feature that the software offers, which we want, but are asked to sign up for a free account with the software provider. This feature is called DNS forwarding. This lets our new router notify their website of any changes to our home ISP, which we can check from anywhere in the world, and subsequently connect to our home machines directly.
Incidentally, this could a very handy feature when attempting to set up a home-based ftp server, which is also included as part of the Clark Connect package.
For more information on this really kickass program, and for download links, click on ClarkConnect.com.
Wanna see some screenies of the web interface in action? Check out ClarkConnect Screenshots.
Deadweasel only likes Linux when he isn't doing the installation
You've also had it with mom giving you hell about all that extra hardware you've got laying around the place, collecting dust. She does have a point. If you've got the guts for a complete computer system lingering around the joint, why not put them to use, shut mom the hell up, and replace that p.o.s. router all at the same time?
Let's see, there's an old Dell PC over there. It's a crappy little Pentium II processor, but you added some memory to it a while back. The hard drive's not all that big, maybe a few gigs. What you didn't realize before was that that crappy old Dell machine is simply perfect for a renewed usefulness as your incredibly flexible and powerful new router! Smack in a second network card, hook up a switch where your router used to be, and the hardware side of things are complete!
Now how to program this thing? How do you turn a complete computer system into something as mundane and everyday as a router? Sure, it runs Windows 98 pretty good, but there's no way to make THAT into any kind of kickass NAT box.
My friend, your troubles are over! Linux is going to save you. Ah ah ah, don't you DARE go cringing and making with the yuck face. You don't really have to understand how to program (or even install) Linux to make this project work. All it takes is to download a quick .iso, burn it to CD, and boot the machine from it.
Clark Connect is based on Red Hat 7.3, but again, you will rarely see the evidence of the Linux OS eyecandy that is common on most desktop installs. This is strictly console-level baby. Command line goodness. Well, there is a rudimentary gui that will help you get setup, but after the basic configuration, you will have the ability to configure the rest through a browser on a machine connected through the network to the router box.
The neatest thing about Clark Connect? It has much better logging capabilities than a standard one-piece router, can do intrusion detection (snort), act as a webserver, provide squid proxy caching (which causes sites you've visited before to load much faster), work as a mailserver and even let you connect to the router machine directly through Windows Network Neighborhood as a Samba-shared machine! Holy crap!
So Mick Nobody and I (well actually just him, I donated the hardware) set up a router box, using Clark Connect on a Dell Optiplex GXa, Pentium II 266MHz, 128MB RAM machine. The setup was a little hairy at first, but we neglected a couple of things that we should have gotten straight in the first place. For one thing, we had the internet cable and the internal network cables in the wrong respective network cards. We also forgot to reboot the cable modem (so it would now pay attention to the new network card it was connected to). Once those problems were fixed though, the whole thing took off like a shot.
Now there is another feature that the software offers, which we want, but are asked to sign up for a free account with the software provider. This feature is called DNS forwarding. This lets our new router notify their website of any changes to our home ISP, which we can check from anywhere in the world, and subsequently connect to our home machines directly.
Incidentally, this could a very handy feature when attempting to set up a home-based ftp server, which is also included as part of the Clark Connect package.
For more information on this really kickass program, and for download links, click on ClarkConnect.com.
Wanna see some screenies of the web interface in action? Check out ClarkConnect Screenshots.
Deadweasel only likes Linux when he isn't doing the installation
