[LARTC] the "cisco vs. Linux" thread

[José Ildefonso Camargo Tolosa]

Ed Wildgoose wrote:
> 
>>> Alfie, have you used the Routerboard 230 or 240 products?  Anyone else?
>>>
>>> Could anyone else recommend other manufacturers of this type of
>>> hardware: an embedded system board with * a couple of NICs
>>> * PCMCIA
>>> * runs linux
>>
>>
>>
>> This one, and its cheaper:
>>
>> http://www.soekris.com/
> 
> 
> 
> Actually, I am really interested in this kind of hardware.  But it's 
> actually not really as cheap as it looks.  (Bear in mind I am based in 
> the UK so I am looking post-shipping price)
> 
> Most of these tiny embeded devices need $20-30 or powersupply, and same 
> again for a case, and a bit of RAM...  It looks like around £300 

No, it have RAM on board (and some of them, flash memory), the power 
supply is unregulated AC (read the specs), so you can buy it on your 
country.

> sterling to me all in.  However, you can often pickup a bottom of the 
> range Compaq/HP server for that price... (OK, not as small and neat!)
> 
> There are some really nice and neat little boxes, which would be good 
> for a mid-priced box where you need the grunt.
> ...But for low end hardware it seems hard to beat the Linksys WRT54GS 
> which is around £50 GPB from ebuyer....  This gets you 32Mb and a 200Mhz 
> processor! (and 2 net cards, a small switch and a wireless radio!)

I have used linksys (what a piece of crab), and I still preffer to buy a 
soekris card and a mini-PCI 802.11g card from netgate.  I can install 
Linux on it, an get a very powerfull router/firewall/vpn.  And due that 
I need it for outdoor mounting, I would buy a nema box.

Can you Install Linux/OpenBSD/FreeBSD on it?

> 
> The "S" model is only starting to arrive in the UK so mine's on 
> backorder, but I think it's easily available in the US?
> 
> Ed W
>