Celejar wrote: > > If you are OK buying used equipment, Intel-based gigabit NICs, 4 ports > > to a PCIe slot, cost about $35 (or $70 new). If you've got a 5 year old > > My understanding - please correct me if I'm wrong - is that with those > types of cards, the ports are distinct and aren't actually switched in > hardware, so switching occurrs at the OS / kernel level. I don't know > how much of a load this puts on the system in practice, but my > understanding is that it's certainly not an ideal way to design a > switch.
Modern processors -- even the ones 5 years old -- are really fast. Linux bridging (switching) is very efficient. Is it "ideal"? No. But given that you want one device which acts as a WAP, router, firewall and switch, it should perform quite well. If you hate the idea of doing that, though, an 8-port gigabit switch is about the same price as a used 4-port gigabit NIC. Not as flexible, though. > > desktop sitting around with 2GB or more RAM and 3 available PCIe slots, > > you can use it as a WAP and have nine switched/routed gigabit ports, > > counting one on the motherboard. If you only need 5 ports, you only > > need 2 PCIe slots -- one for a WiFI NIC and one for the ethernet NIC. > > My understanding, although I could not find solid documentation of this, > is that consumer wireless chipsets designed for client use don't make > particularly performant APs. They'll work, but purpose built APs will > perform much better, especially with their AP optimized antennas. I > don't really know if this is true, though, and to what extent it's an > issue, if it really is one. Oh, no, this is a myth. The $20-150 consumer wifi routers use the same wifi interface chips as good PCIe cards, for the most part. OpenWRT is actually a great source of information on these. Assuming you're comparing a 3 antenna MIMO on a PCIe card to a 3 antenna MIMO on a consumer router, you should get equivalent range and performance. > And the power usage on a five year old desktop (which I don't actually > have) will be much higher than a purpose-built AIO AP / switch / router. That can be true. But then, the desktop can also be your server for a bunch of other things that, perhaps, you were going to run. > But again, I don't really disagree. If I had the hardware lying around, > and I determined that the power consumption wasn't a factor, it would > certainly be tempting to consider this route. Everything is a tradeoff. -dsr-
