PC Router

The Problem

Our home internet situation is ... well, it's a little tangled. A picture helps explain (click it to go to annotated Flickr image identifying each device):

Why all this mess? Simple: this is what you get when you need dual WAN interfaces and VOIP, at consumer pricing levels. Worse, I have VOIP from two providers - and a third vendor-neutral VOIP adapter I'm testing out. Admittedly, this is not an issue currently faced by many home users.

But normal home users have smaller version of the problem. Home router, wireless, VOIP box, and a cablemodem ... that's four separate devices, 4 wall-warts, and a small rats-nest of interconnects. Add to this the wonderful trend of device makers to put their circuitry into swooshy, curved, odd-shaped cases that you cannot stack. And it gets ugly fast!

Funky-shaped boxes aren't the end of the hassles with consumer-grade routers, cable/dsl-modems, VOIP boxes, and wireless access points. There's also the funky feature sets. Seems like every different box has a different set of features and a different interface. You can go mad trying to figure out if your router will properly support your company's IPSEC VPN, for instance, while also letting you build a DMZ for that self-hosted game server.

The Proposed Solution

Can't we put all this stuff into one box, with one power plug - and eliminate a lot of proprietary gotchas?

After all, it's really just software, wrapped up in proprietary hardware boxes. And there are several choices in the OSS world. Can we build a box that puts everything together into a little PC with one power plug, and some wires hanging out of it? There are not that many internal cable or DSL modems, but some of them do exist. Hmm. Let's start listing out some stuff we'll need to have:

1. PC case. Quiet is good. Cheap, too.
2. Motherboard with at least 3 PCI slots (more would be better)
3. Small hard drive, or CF disk.
4. Qty 2 10/100 PCI NIC. Maybe more, or a multiport NIC card.
5. PCI DSL-modem card. (Note that on Speakeasy, I need a DMT/G.lite modem, NOT a CAP modem)
   1. Intellinet ADSL Modem - $90
   2. Netcomm NB1000 -$39
   3. 3com 3CP3617B (support/docs) - no BSD/linux drivers.
   4. Alcatel Speedtouch - ebay. I did find linux/BSD drivers BUT they seem to be only for USB versions. ebay
   5. Sangoma S518 has linux docs. I'd probably go with this. $130
6. PCI DOCSIS cablemodem card. DOCSIS comes in versions 1.0,1.1, 2.0, 3.0. Go here for explanations of differences. Figuring out which one you have may be a chore. My current Motorola SB5120 (provided by Comcast) is a DOCSIS 2.0 modem. The basic skinny on internal cablemodems is: do not bother; there aren't any current ones.
   1. Zoom Telephonics 5001 (support/docs). DOCSIS 1.0 got a good linux review, but is discontinued. Ebay? Maybe avbl here. $46 + ship
   2. Motorola SB4000 (docs) is apparently DOCSIS 1.0/1.1, has supported Windows drivers. What about linux? Discontinued.
7. PCI 4-port switch card. This looks good and apparently has linux support.
8. PCI Wireless base station
9. PCI VOIP 'FXS' card, or SIP-compliant VOIP phones
   1. Sangoma Remora - about $250 with 2 FXS
   2. Digium TDM20B - about $210 with 2 FXS
   3. Aastra 480i-CT - about $275 base phone w/1 wireless handset. Extra handsets about $110 each. It supports up to 4 handsets.
10. OSS operating system - BSD preferred. Untangle or PFsense may be another way to go. (Can trixbox and pfsense run on same system?)
11. Router/firewall software - pfsense?
12. VOIP software - Asterisk?
13.