[ale] homebrew routers, castoff hardware

[Alex Carver]

On 2017-09-23 12:04, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Sat, 23 Sep 2017 00:31:54 -0700
> Alex Carver <agcarver+ale at acarver.net> wrote:
> 
>> On 2017-09-22 15:59, Joey Kelly wrote:
>>> On Friday 22 September 2017 12:53:34 DJ-Pfulio wrote:  
>>>> The newer APU2 CPUs handle 750+Mbps on their GigE connections
>>>> thanks to Intel NICs.  These aren't the old Alix boards.  
>>>
>>> I'm about to get a few of these for my lab. I'm working on a
>>> perpetual dev project and had wanted to use Soekris, but they just
>>> pulled out of the US. I started looking for a replacement and found
>>> these, the apparent Alix successor. These things are beefier and
>>> way cheaper, so it's a win.
>>>
>>> On a side note, there's lots of little router-style boxes out of
>>> there, but most of them are from Red China. I shudder to think what
>>> lurks in the firmware.
>>>
>>> --Joey
>>>   
>>
>> I've been looking at one of these though I haven't pulled the trigger
>> yet since they're not cheap.  Not necessarily direct from China
>> (though one office is in Taiwan).
>>
>> https://www.logicsupply.com/ml400g-12/
> 
> Not cheap is an understatement. At 15 cents/kw-hr, I spend about
> $0.40/day running my guestimate 100 watt ancient box. So that's in the
> neighborhood of $150/year. It would take me 4.4 years running the
> recommended low power computer to break even. Would the $662 computer
> last that long and still be relevant to start saving? It's a
> reasonable question, although I have a feeling the answer would be
> "yes".
> 
> In this calculation I assumed the low power unit uses 0 watts, because
> my round figure of 100w for my old commodity box is probably low too.
> 
> For those of us living in warm climates, a factor in favor of the low
> power machine is that my 100 watts creates heat which must be
> removed via the rather inefficient method of air conditioning,
> effectively raising the wattage I pay for due to this one computer.
> 
> I'd feel much better about this investment if it were $300.00. An
> investment that pays for itself in 2 years is a no brainer, as long as
> there's a reasonable expectation the equipment will last longer than
> that.
> 
> Whether you buy one of these or not, it's essential to have a second
> computer, probably an old commodity box, at the ready in case this one
> screws up. You should also have an up to date copy of pfSense or ipCop
> or OpenBSD or whatever you're using to firewall.
> 
> I love the fact that, as configured, this computer has no wifi. I
> really want my wifi separate from my firewall.

Yes, it's expensive but it will likely run for a very long time as a
fanless unit (especially if you seal the ports with the plug kit they
have).  The one "consumable" is the SSD but that's replaceable in the
future.  Having five NICs on board also means a lot of flexibility for
networking (the WAN, a WiFi network, a wired network, a guest, a spare
failover).  It does have the option for a cellular modem which makes for
interesting failover options.

In any event I don't mind a slightly more expensive bit of hardware if
it will do what I want and is well built enough to last a while.  $600
for hardware that dies in a year obviously not.  But $600 for something
that could last 10 years with nominal upgrades to the OS and possibly
SSD, that's not so bad.  Especially if the power consumption is low.

My main goal is an intelligent firewall that can do remote logging to an
internal machine, failover mechanisms for times when the main network
goes down, and relatively easy upgrade paths (upgrading a standard OS
rather than a JFFS based thing like OpenWRT).