Do you have an old computer lying around?  If you want to go the really
cheap route just buy a couple NICs and a small switch then install
Smoothwall on it <http://www.smoothwall.org/>.  I've been using it for
about 4 years now and I haven't been disappointed yet.

-Adam

On Wed, Mar 03, 2010 at 12:33:13PM -0600, J Cruit wrote:
>    I use the Ubiquiti PicoStation and Bullet APs running DD-WRT (pro) on them
>    and they are very solid.  Although I tend to use them for evil hacking
>    and less day to day use.  They are super cheap and even come in the HP
>    version with 1W of serious brain scrambling power.  Also they are very
>    small and are powered by POE (the pico comes with an adapter)
> 
>    Sounds like you actually still need Ethernet ports though so the
>    routerstation pro is also supported by DD-WRT (Pro) and also powered by
>    POE and you can choose up to two radios to put in it.  I think I'm going
>    to have to build one now, sounds pretty fun and dangerous.
> 
>    Of course openwrt is also supported but I have had stability issues with
>    it as well although that was eons ago (at least a year!) so it may be
>    resolved by now. 
> 
>    --j
> 
>    On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 11:15 AM, Raymond Norton <[1]admin at lctn.org> wrote:
> 
>      Florin Iucha wrote:
>      > My Linksys WRT54G is dying on me and I'd like to replace it with a
>      > real router/access point based on Linux and using only free software
>      > drivers.
>      >
>      > The old choice was Soekris [1] but they seem to be longer in the tooth
>      > and in the price: ~$270 for just the box and the motherboard, with the
>      > wireless being extra.
>      >
>      > Now, it seems that the top contenders are MicroTik RouterBoard [2] and
>      > Ubiquiti RouterStationPRO [3].  Netgate [4] has a nice kit for $300
>      > that includes the motherboard, case, wi-fi card and antennas.
>      >
>      > Looking at the devices themselves, the Ubiquiti has Gigabit ports,
>      > while MicroTik doesn't yet have a board with both Gigabit and mini-pci
>      > (for wi-fi).
>      >
>      > From the software perspective, MicroTik has their own Linux Distro
>      > (RouterOS) which seems to be quite polished, while Ubiquiti uses
>      > OpenWRT, which I found to be not as stable.
>      >
>      > Does anybody has any hands-on experience with either of these two
>      > options and has good or bad experiences?  Any other option that I
>      > should consider given the ~$300 budget?
>      >
> 
>      We use MikroTik-embedded on RouterBoards, and installed on  HDs. Both
>      ways work very well. Highly recommended on our side of the world.
> 
>      _______________________________________________
>      TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
>      [2]tclug-list at mn-linux.org
>      [3]http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list
> 
> References
> 
>    Visible links
>    1. mailto:admin at lctn.org
>    2. mailto:tclug-list at mn-linux.org
>    3. http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list

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