alternatives exist

Posted Apr 26, 2016 10:47 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: alternatives exist by johannbg
Parent article: Moglen: How Should the Free Software Movement View the Linux Foundation?

Looking at my 'next hardware when the Soekris dies' list, that's on there already. Unfortunately hardware with more than a couple of Ethernet ports is *expensive*, particularly if you also want something that's fanless...

alternatives exist

Posted Apr 27, 2016 11:08 UTC (Wed) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link] (3 responses)

>Unfortunately hardware with more than a couple of Ethernet ports is *expensive*, particularly if you also want something that's fanless

Well how may ethernet ports do you need, and what's the threshold for 'too expensive'? I'm guessing something like £150+VAT is probably over it:
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/~FX5624 (bizarre that only two of the ports are gigabit, though in many scenarios that wouldn't be a showstopper)
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/~JNF9HG-2930

Otherwise maybe a mini-itx board with 2 ethernet ports and a PCI-E slot to add more would be the way forward, like this:
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/~N3050N-D3H

alternatives exist

Posted May 10, 2016 21:16 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Yeah, stuff just like that from the mini-itx store is probably what I'll be looking at. The only problem with that sort of thing is what to do if I need console access; Soekris has a serial console, but attaching a VGA screen is likely to be a nightmare given where the box is located. Maybe there's such a thing as a VGA over USB adapter, but I've never heard of any :)

alternatives exist

Posted May 10, 2016 21:32 UTC (Tue) by TomH (subscriber, #56149) [Link] (1 responses)

Something like http://plugable.com/products/uga-3000 you mean?

alternatives exist

Posted May 11, 2016 22:25 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Something like that, only without the "Not supported for Mac or Linux at this time." caveat.

alternatives exist

Posted Apr 27, 2016 21:36 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (11 responses)

http://routerboard.com/RB450 ?

alternatives exist

Posted Apr 27, 2016 22:23 UTC (Wed) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link] (2 responses)

This is the 21 century so you want the Gig model [1] which also has more RAM, faster CPU and a microSD card slot for file storage.

The hex [2] is also fanless ( and cheaper ).

Perhaps LWN writers should just buy one of these devices and do a review on the routerOS that comes with it which should enlighten most individuals that you better of ( time and price wize ) just buying one of those device with routerOS and it's subscriptions rather than wasting your time and effort trying to hack some remotely function network device out of RPI, Odroid or the likes.

1. http://routerboard.com/RB450G ( $59.95 )
2. http://routerboard.com/RB750Gr2 ( $99.00 )

alternatives exist

Posted Apr 27, 2016 22:40 UTC (Wed) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link]

I accidental swapped the price points there

Here is an $18 enclosure for the RB450G.

1. http://www.ispsupplies.com/categories/Indoor-Enclosures/M...

alternatives exist

Posted Apr 27, 2016 22:42 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

RouterOS itself is a fine product, but it's a commercial product. You get a basic license with the board and it's good enough for a simple access point and it's also surprisingly easy to lose your license by reflashing the device.

I have several RBs running regular vanilla Debian for MIPS and I've had no problems at all with it. Recovering from a bad installation is also easy, the board's bootloader has built-in netboot support and is accessible through UART, so you just need to set up a DHCP+TFTP to serve recovery image and select it during the boot.

It's pretty much the best router-type device I've ever worked with. Head and shoulders ahead of ARM-based crapware home routers.

alternatives exist

Posted Apr 27, 2016 23:33 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (7 responses)

I've looked at their stuff in the past, but the fact that I can't put my own linux build on too much of their stuff has eliminated it for me.

There was someone working on doing this, but the work was being done under an NDA where he wasn't allowed to release the result and the company then got sticky about even renewing the NDA, let alone allowing the release of the result.

they got a bit of money from me, and burned me by their change in stance, so I'm not getting more of their stuff until they actually release stuff.

Since routerOS is linux based, they really should be doing so. And they really should update it (the last I read it was based on the 2.6 kernel)

alternatives exist

Posted Apr 28, 2016 0:29 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

You most definitely can run custom code on their boxes, you don't need anything really special. I think they are even supported by the mainline kernel now (quick check shows that there are indeed RB4xx support files in the kernel).

There are HOWTOs about running Debian on RBs, they are somewhat dated but still working.

There's also full OpenWRT support.

alternatives exist

Posted Apr 28, 2016 0:45 UTC (Thu) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link] (5 responses)

"Since routerOS is linux based, they really should be doing so. And they really should update it (the last I read it was based on the 2.6 kernel)"

There are continues updates of the routerOS and these days it's based on the Linux 3.3.5 kernel.

The source code for it is available on request but I must say I have never tested requesting it from them ( or anyone else for that matter ) so I can't say how "functional" that process is from them but indeed it should be open but I guess they are one of those vendors that think they are doing something very special in their proprietary environment which other vendors are not doing when in fact in a nutshell they are all doing the same thing.

alternatives exist

Posted Apr 28, 2016 1:31 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (4 responses)

I'll take another look. About a year ago when I last looked, things were rather dismal, at least for the crs125 switch I was looking at and what I was begin told by the guy trying to get openwrt working on it.

Their "What is RouterOS" pdf still claims that it's linux 2.6 based. I don't know if I'm glad that the document is so out of date or not :-)

The Openwrt table of hardware page isn't encouraging ( https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/mikrotik/crs125g ) but it wouldn't be the first time a page didn't get updated after things got working.

alternatives exist

Posted Apr 28, 2016 9:41 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (3 responses)

This page is a little bit better: https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/mikrotik/rb450g

alternatives exist

Posted Apr 28, 2016 15:26 UTC (Thu) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link] (2 responses)

If he's going to be playing with openwrt for fun he's probably better of just buying one of Turris ( which is based on openwrt ) devices.

1. https://omnia.turris.cz/en/

alternatives exist

Posted Apr 28, 2016 16:34 UTC (Thu) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link]

I should mention to readers that might have been unaware of turris and it's campaign and have a higher budget to play with than what has been previously discussed here that they have up to May 5th to get the indigo campaign specific stuff.

Once that date has passed only products intended for future retail sale will remain available [1].

Note this is completely open project on a completely open hardware ( as it can be ) and people will be able to replace the turris openwrt with their own distribution if they so much want ( which alot of people will do including myself ) in fact the cz.nic guys already have given Andreas Färber ( suse/arm ) one of their prototype to experiment with to do just that and Andreas has already gotten opensuse running on it and shared the instruction how he did so with the opensuse community here [4] ( which should be enough to get other distribution and people started ).

Here are some couple of other links readers might find useful [3][4].

1. http://en.blog.nic.cz/2016/04/27/turris-omnia-campaign-en...
2. https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-arm/2016-03/msg00136....
3. https://github.com/CZ-NIC
4. https://www.turris.cz/en/

alternatives exist

Posted Apr 28, 2016 17:48 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

I've got one on order.

I do a bit more than just playing with it for fun. I run the wireless network at the Scale conference, this year I deployed about 120 APs around the convention center.