Hi,
Last week I finished installing a small network in a private school : one server (an old IBM X225), seventeen desktops (Fujitsu Siemens PIV 2.4 GHZ, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB HD), all running CentOS 5.5.
One extra machine is acting as a router, in that it is installed between the DSL modem and the network, with two Ethernet cards, and it's taking care of DHCP, DNS, NTP and also acts like a proxy (with Squid). It seems quite big and noisy and electricity-consuming to me, so I wonder if there is any small device that could possibly do the job as good, but which would me more adapted : small, solid and cheap (if possible). I imagine some tiny box just with a CPU and a small harddisk, a little RAM and two network interfaces (one out, one in), where I could install a very stripped-down CentOS, and then just forget about it.
So far, I've googled a bit, and I've found two things: 1) Pyramid Soekris boards, where I can put something like Pyramid Linux on it. And 2) The Linksys WRT54GL, for which there are Linux firmwares like OpenWRT and DD-WRT.
Is there anything you could especially recommend for this job? (I'm not afraid of getting my hands dirty, BTW :oD)
Cheers,
Niki