Turning an old PC into a router with OPNsense

[@eDoc2020]

Nice little project but as someone who's been running an OPNsense system for a few years I have a few suggestions if you ever want to repeat this. First, use ZFS instead of the default UFS. UFS doesn't like unclean shutdowns and the system would sometimes come up in recovery mode. With my new ZFS install it just comes back on without issue. Second, you don't need that much RAM. 2GB is _more_ than enough for any home or small business use. There's also no performance benefit to an SSD because once you're booted the drive is really only used for storing log files. Third, I would avoid using the onboard Ethernet for the WAN connection. Realtek NICs are worse and have traditionally had performance/reliability problems. But more importantly, if your BIOS gets reset it might try to network boot and you don't want it blindly loading code from the public interface.

[@BurritoVampire]

As another retro computer enthusiast, I have a bunch of old wifi routers. I pick them up if they are sub $5 (That's red blooded, meat eating, diesel powered, USD not that play money the ice people up north have) and interesting in some way. Like the venerable Linksys WRT54G. I've acquired a few of those and actually used one along with a matching cable modem in the mid 00s. Since then, they have become obsolete but their interesting quirk is the stacking. That tickles my fancy so I want to make a video about what you can do with a pile of old routers from the dawn of broadband. Anyhoo, I digress. My favorite thing to do with them that's still useful today is flashing DD-WRT firmware on them and use them as wireless bridges. Even though they are limited to 54mbps, they do come in handy in a pinch for connecting an old computer to wifi or even extending a waning signal in a building. A lot of other Linksys routers can support that firmware, and there are tons of other firmware and routers from manufacturers that you can flash and do this with too. That's what I think your pod really is. Just a cheap bridge. It might support being a gateway itself but using the wifi as the uplink but hard to say. LOL I just wrote all that then hit play on the video and the next words you say are Linksys WRT54G. I swear those things are like the Miranda-class (if you know, we can be friends) Amazing! Love it! That's why I'm here. Thinking on the same wavelength!

[@procta2343]

great stuff Florence! shame are not on the retro machines group anymore, to show this off. Years ago i read you could do something very similar with 486s with Linux, so this is a great way to still use older PCs, as well as servers too. What you could do, is use one port to access this only, and do away with the keyboard and mouse and monitor, sort of a remote telnet / terminal service. You could that with windows 2003 server once that was loaded, in fact windows server as routing and remote services, which i think is very similar to this, one nic pointing to the outside world, the other connected to the network. I played with it twice at college, and it was great. I would be tempted to go further with this, hardware wise. Just for the sake of it, does it cover file sharing?

[@eDoc2020]

12:30 I'm going to stop for a minute and say I've also had a situation where updating the BIOS made a _big_ difference. On my netbook updating the BIOS switches the hard drive from IDE emulation to native AHCI. Other than that the largest difference I've seen is improved fan control.

[@dysfunctionalwombat]

This has me tempting messing with OPNsense or PFsense for my main router again. Maybe I just will.

[@eDoc2020]

Regarding the old-32 bit version, that's actually why I chose OPNsense over pfSense. My first install was on a Pentium III 800MHz with 256 megs of RAM and the web interface was slow. I quickly moved the drive to a Pentium M 1.1GHz system with a gig of RAM and it was much nicer to use. Then after only one more update they discontinued the 32-bit version. Since it worked on my Pentium III it definitely doesn't need the latest CPUs like Windows 8/10 does. My guess is any 686 CPU with PAE will work but 586 CPUs might not.

[@ps5hasnogames55]

FreeBSD upstream is discontinuing 32-bit support, so the writing was on the wall anyway.

[@eDoc2020]

One more little thing, I'd avoid using USB network adapters. It's more reliable to use tagged VLANs and a VLAN-capable switch. I have 5 or 6 networks on my OPNsense even though I only have one physical network port. You also need tagged VLANs if you want more than one SSID on a single wireless access point so a managed/"smart" switch is definitely nice to have. OpenWRT (and DD-Wrt) let you turn cheap old routers into such a switch. VLAN-capable switches are also nice if you want to play around with virtualization and hypervisors. Btw I'm in the middle of network upgrades right now so much of this in my mind.

[@BurritoVampire]

Okay, getting to the end and I have a second comment! I would really want to try that old version of OpenSense too! Upload that bad boy to the archive! I wonder if it would panic when it sees 2 ISA 2BaseT Ethernet cards... and a Pentium. I think any lower than that and minimum required memory will start to be an issue. I used to have 4 Compaq deskpros that all had Pentium Pros in them... yet another reason I hated throwing stuff away when I was a kid. Those would have been awesome for this!

[@ShieyV2komputroniks]

could a wifi card be used as wifi output?

[@themaritimegirl]

Technically yes, but apparently support is very spotty and it just doesn't work well. A dedicated hardware AP is the way to go.

[@Jon-hx7pe]

i don't see the value in this because of the electricity use and maintenance of the computer - running it continuously over a couple of years will cost as much as buying a good enough router.

[@themaritimegirl]

Sure, if that's what your priorities are.

[@Jon-hx7pe]

if the computer needs to be on anyway for another purpose and router software can run within a normal os - it could make sense.@@themaritimegirl

[@mycaI_]

While its a cool idea... For me, It comes down to how much power costs in your area. If an old pc is free , but costs $100 in electricity a year to run , it quickly becomes a poor solution. Great to learn on though.

[@jamescollins6085]

I think people do this for all the advanced functionality and the novelty of setting it all up. Power consumption is definitely a factor, but the majority of people will earn that $100 annual running cost in a day.

[@anand-nb4bb]

Hi , I want the internet to be working on my base system as well & also should be able to connect to my work network as a lot of websites are blocked inside the work network. Split Tunneling is enabled on the OpenVPN server but it seems my system is missing some configuration which is causing it to not work Can you please tell me what settings I need to do on my laptop VPN to make this work. Kindly help. There is a ovpn configuration file in which following details are given as below pull-filter ignore "redirect gateway" route-nopull route 255.255.255.255 But still after connecting vpn the internet on my ubuntu machine disconnects

[@themaritimegirl]

As stated in the video, I am not a networking guru.