Looking for a new Linux router. Buffalo AirStation?

[Ben Scott]

On Sun, Aug 5, 2012 at 7:59 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen
<rozzin at geekspace.com> wrote:
> I've heard that Buffalo Technology ships DD-WRT pre-installed
> on their devices, so maybe that's what I want.

  I'm not sure if that's what's shipping in the box, but most of
Buffalo's current SOHO gateway products do offer a customized DD-WRT
build as a supported option.  (They also have their own flavor of
firmware.  Either can be downloaded from the Buffalo website.)  The
DD-WRT generic builds will also install easily.

>     * What I have right now, and what I really want, is basically
>       - 2 separate wired interfaces, both of which are distinct
>         from the wireless interface
>       - a bunch of iptables rules to route/firewall between
>         those 3 different networks

  Most of these SOHO boxes implement their Ethernet ports as a managed
switch.  The embedded OS sees two physical network interfaces: One
wireless radio, and one wired Ethernet.  VLANs are then used to have
one of the switch ports be the "WAN" or "Internet" port, and the rest
be "LAN".

  In terms of Linux, VLANs appear as separate virtual network
interfaces.  So you'll likely see one eth0, but you can configure that
as eth0.1, eth0.2, etc., and assign whichever ports you like to each
VLAN.

  If you have two private wired networks, one private wireless
network, plus an uplink to the Internet, you might configure eth0.1,
eth0.2, and eth0.2.  Put the WAN port in VLAN 1 (eth0.1).  Put another
port in VLAN 2 (eth0.2).  Put the remaining two ports in VLAN 3
(eth0.3).  The wireless interface would be wlan0.  Route between them
all as desired.

> Checking the listings on Amazon.com ...  Help! What's the different? Which one
> do I want, if any?

 Have you tried the manufacturer's website?  That's generally the
first place one should go to answer questions about a given
manufacturer's products.  Last I was there, they had a feature
comparison matrix and spec sheets.

> * Do they work well?

  With DD-WRT, they work reasonably well, given the price (typically
well under $100).  They're not a several-thousand-dollar commercial
router, but they'll handle most home use just fine.

  One thing to keep in mind is that the embedded system is generally
fairly low-capacity, both in terms of MIPS, I/O throughput, and
RAM/ROM.  Traffic on the same VLAN (broadcast domain) is handled
within the switch ASIC, and will be nice and speedy.  Traffic routed
across VLANs has to through the CPU, and will be a lot slower.
Likewise, trying to do a VPN or SSL webserver or media codec will be
slow -- possibly unusably so.

  But if you understand what they can and can't do, they're very handy.

  We have several of these Buffalo units in use at work, and they seem good.

  Buffalo has a few nice things in their favor: They're a big
supporter of DD-WRT, both in terms of money to the project, and
enabling their customers to run it.  Their devices have a physical
switch which will tell the box's firmware not to run it's
router/NAT/DHCP services, and instead just act like a simple wireless
access point.  Handy for quick setup by non-techie types.  They print
the default username, password, IP address, SSID, and WPA key on the
label.

  Their tech support tends to be fair to horrible, but you will find
that with every product in this product space.  If you want top-notch
commercial support, you're going to need to buy an expensive
commercial product.

-- Ben