Anyone Ever Made a Homemade Router or Switch?
Just wondering, is it even possible? I was going to for my senior project-- but then the senior project for my class was cancelled. 
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Asif Dasl
Member Posts: 2,116 ■■■■■■■■□□
Look at Mikrotik, I'm not a network guy but I've heard their performance to cost ratio wipes the competition. Downside? It's a little do-it-yourself which you could view as a good thing or a bad thing depending on your viewpoint. Think Raspberry Pi but for routers and wireless hardware.
RouterBoard.com : Products -
JDMurray
Admin Posts: 13,093 Admin
You can make a router from a PC motherboard or Virtual Machine with multiple NICs and running free router/firewall software. I've had very good luck with Vyatta Core running in VMware, but I don't know how well the Open Source release of Vyatta is supported. -
Plantwiz
Mod Posts: 5,057 Mod
Played with ClarkConnect several years back (OMG, it has been a very long time). Has some potential!Plantwiz
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"Grammar and spelling aren't everything, but this is a forum, not a chat room. You have plenty of time to spell out the word "you", and look just a little bit smarter." by Phaideaux
***I'll add you can Capitalize the word 'I' to show a little respect for yourself too.
'i' before 'e' except after 'c'.... weird? -
paul78
Member Posts: 3,016 ■■■■■■■■■■
There are actually many Linux and BSD based router and firewall distros if you don't want to build one from scratch. From a learning/project point of view - you may want to consider explore building a Linux based router from scratch. I would recommend starting with BuildRoot to build the base OS. Buildroot: making embedded Linux easy
You didn't really share the level of experience that you have so if you want to just use a router distro that's already out there - several to consider include:
The ever popular - Open WRT - https://openwrt.org/
The of fork of Linux Router Project - LEAF isn't active any more but still relevant - LEAF — Linux Embedded Appliance Firewall
I came across Mikrotik/RouterOS a while back but never installed it - MikroTik Routers and Wireless: Downloads
I personally use M0n0wall since is BSD based - more of a firewall platform but has basic static routing features - m0n0wall
A comprehensive list of others here - List of router and firewall distributions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia -
wes allen
Member Posts: 540 ■■■■■□□□□□
You should look at what you can do with a raspberry pi and routing.
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it_consultant
Member Posts: 1,903
Just wondering, is it even possible? I was going to for my senior project-- but then the senior project for my class was cancelled.
Check to see if this would be an acceptable project. Setting up a linux (or even Windows based) router is really very simple and may not be appropriately challenging for a senior project. I would expect a project like this in intro to Linux or something.
