Can Old Laptops Be Routers Too? 42
"As best as I can tell, an old laptop would make a perfect Linux router. You have a notebook-sized machine that has it's own monitor, mouse, and keyboard that easily hide away when the machine is not in need of human attention. Furthermore, most laptops have two PCMCIA slots to accommodate the two necessary network cards. My old WinBook XP even has a built in modem for dial-in access, should the situation demand it.
If the power goes out, a notebook computer would keep running for anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours. This would allow any critical systems to complete their tasks, assuming that they are on a UPS. And if you need to use such a setup at an alternate location, you could just pickup and go with the laptop.
My question is this: Is there a downside to using an old laptop as a Linux-based router? Obviously you wouldn't use such a device in a large-scale office setting, but could this be a viable alternative to picking up one of those $130 Linksys Cable/DSL routers? If not, why not?"
That is what I am doing... (Score:1)
Configuring the two PCMCIA NICs was not hard at all (that's the honest truth).
Right now it is serving as a router, webserver, proxy server, firewall, etc.
It is sitting quietly on a shelf in my desk.
And there are other things I use it for, I use it as a webserver, playing with PHP, etc.
And then I just use it as a general Linux to play with and learn from.
I have never had trouble with it over heating or any other sort of 100% duty cycle induced troubles.
That will vary with make/model of notebook to notebook.
Genesis
Laptop Cooling (Score:1)
At an electronics parts store or a hardware store you can get rubber stick-on feet that probably stick out more than those on the laptop. The original design tried to make the laptop portable. These taller bumps makes it less like a flat book, but lets more air flow underneath.
Consider putting the laptop on its side like a book, so air flows along the large flat surfaces. But study the hot spots -- you probably want the fan near the top to draw out the heat. If you know where the power supply, CPU, disk, and PCMCIA slots are, consider those the hot spots. The disk will be cool if you don't use it, particularly if it powers off for weeks at a time (a router doesn't need a disk much). The CPU and PCMCIA slots will probably be the hottest -- but feel the case after it's been running for an hour to see if you can find warm spots. Eject the PCMCIA cards and feel how warm they are. If the fan blows air out of the case, you probably want the fan near the top, so cool air can be drawn over the hot parts and convection ("warm air rises") will let the fan blow it out. If the fan blows air into the case, the warm spots (PCMCIA slots?) should be on top, so convection will encourage air to move up and out. Consider putting rubber feet on the side which will be on the bottom, to ensure airflow.
You also can get a PC-type fan (110VAC, 12VDC, or other voltages) and let it blow across the laptop. I think small squirrel-cage fans tend to easily blow air low and quietly.
Use What You Have (Score:1)
If all you've got is a laptop, use it.
overkill... I use a 486 (Score:1)
I'd rather keep the laptop as a terminal for use in the living room, maybe to access TV-guides and stuff from the net, or surf while watching the tube.
Even routing three computer's traffic on the internet, and running a web server and firewall, my 486 still twiddles it's thumbs most of the time.
MadCow. kevin@mad-cow.tv
Worked for me (Score:1)
Re:Heat, cost and expandability (Score:1)
Why support the local guy? (Score:2)
Unless you want over-priced and ill-assembled PCs, of course.
I don't know how common this is across the country, but not everyone has local shops that deserve to be supported.
Re:How useful are old laptops, really? (Score:2)
With an X-less laptop, you can do anything text-based. That means you can take notes in class, program on the train, keep your email with you, write a novel. With some svgalib/ggi/fb-based utils, you can check images, preview postscript or dvi docs, and more.
An old laptop isn't a replacement for a real machine, but it's a useful add-on. A lot of the time, you don't want to drag your desktop/tower to the living room to watch tv, or to a roleplaying game to store the module, or out near the grill to check email and hack on something. When you're doing that, you don't need Netscape, and you can get by without X. Then send anything you did back over the network to your main machine.
I had an 8MB 486 laptop once which was great for this sort of thing. (Now, I have a PIII 700, but that's because I fell in love with the portable lifestyle....)
Problems... (Score:1)
Re:Problems... (Score:2)
2) PCMCIA cards suck juice and two of them running constantly will suck more especially on an older laptop (so the benefit of working without power might be minimal - plus you need a UPS for the DSL/Cable equipement too unless you're doing dialup).
3) Laptops aren't built for 24x7x365 service - problems like heat dispertion, power supply meltdown (wall bricks), etc...
4) How hard is it to put a little 486 or lowly pentium in the corner and let it do it's job. You can even remove the hard drive and simply use a boot floppy or cd-rom.
If you really want to do it why listen to any of us though! The nics are NOT expensive - just go look for dlink or linksys 10mbps PCMCIA nics - they are like $20-$30 shipped. You can get Intel 10mbps PCMCIA nics for $15-$30 (pulls) without the $5 cord. Just have to look around... The only reason I wouldn't do it is the "laptops aren't made for 365x7x24" angle. But you could give it a shot...
(sorry about the other post, forgot to put in my P's)
Re:openBSD does PCMCIA just fine, thanks (Score:2)
I'm sure OpenBSD does work on laptops but I've not found it easy to get the PC Cards working - the rest of the install was fine, though.
Re:So what works? (Score:2)
- Xircom 10/100 card - CE3
- Psion Dacom Gold Card 56K modem
- Ositech Jack of Diamonds - combo V.34 modem and 10baseT modem
I was quite stunned when the latter worked first time several years ago, as it is fairly obscure.
Re:Problems... (Score:2)
I don't have enough space currently to put another desktop PC in my home office - particularly if it had a monitor and keyboard. Laptops are ideal for monitoring firewall logs, too - I just hit the control key and can check any current port scans shown by my 'tail -f' command.
Use a 486 laptop (Score:3)
It's more hassle than a dedicated firewall box to set up, but it's cheaper and I really couldn't use a 640x480 screen laptop for anything else these days. Most importantly, it's very flexible - I can write my own script to analyse logs, install extra tools for intrusion detection, and so on.
The biggest pain is trying to get OpenBSD to work with PCMCIA cards - haven't yet managed to get this working, so if you want OpenBSD you may be better off with a desktop/tower type PC.
there's nothing wrong with that idea (Score:1)
sure, the $130 router would be nice, but do you really need it. if you like using your laptop like this, more power to you. you could even take out some of the hardware like the hard drive and just run a floppy linux router distribution. this would conserve power (longer battery) while giving you a new drive to mess with (2.5 to 3.5 ide converter).
like anything, if it works, it can't be the wrong solution.
Re:Actually, yes (Score:1)
Heat, cost and expandability (Score:3)
Heat: As others have mentioned, laptops run hot.
Cost: An old laptop is still worth alot more than an old PC from the same era. Old P75 computers are dirt cheep. Usually $50 or less, please, please take them off our hands.
Expandability: A laptop usually has at most 2 slots for expansion. That's it. An old P75 will likely have 3 PCI slots plus 3-4 ISA slots. This allows it to be a firewall for both a local network as well as a DMZ, and have each segment physically separate. I evicted the PCI graphics card from my firewall and replaced it with an old ISA VGA card so I could use the PCI slot for a NIC. I have three PCI 10/100 NICs in it as well as a PCI SCSI card for the logging hard disks.
openBSD does PCMCIA just fine, thanks (Score:1)
The biggest pain is trying to get OpenBSD to work with PCMCIA cards - haven't yet managed to get this working, so if you want OpenBSD you may be better off with a desktop/tower type PC.
At least on my machine - toshiba p75 - PCMCIA ethernet cards just plain work, with absolutely no effort required.
Mind you, this was with release 2.8, so I don't know if there were problems in the past.
Re:How useful are old laptops, really? (Score:1)
With a modem (usually internal) it can browse the web and do other basic things. Essentially all the "webplayer" and "network appliance" machines are P5-150 equivs with small 640x480 or 800x600 displays in a small form factor. Well, shoot. That's basically an old notebook with a specific software configuration.
- Mike
10base PC Cards are cheaper now (Score:3)
The newer 3c589d versions (which I use around the house -- I even have spares for laptop-owning friends!) are even less expensive. $18 from a place in Texas. Again, these include dongles -- an important distinction, as you can get bare cards for about $12. (But not, apparently, from places listed with Pricewatch)
Pricewatch can be a pain with all the frames, so...
This being said, I find the laptop solution to a firewall to be ideal. I have a P233 ThinkPad that OpenBSD 2.8 installed on flawlessly, and the two previously mentioned PC Cards work with equal ease. Should I need a LAN elsewhere (where there is no cable modem or xDSL), all I need do is swap the lower ethernet card for a modem. The system runs IPF in stateful mode, DHCP server on ep1 (internal interface) only (of course), no X, and SSH allowing internal (listen address 10.0.0.1) access only.
It makes for quite an impressive tool -- it's interesting to see all the scans that get /dev/null-ed, too. That, and all the ICMP from caida.org.
The final thing -- it's silent, or nearly so. My previous firewall box was a P-100 with fans and noisy hard drives. It wasn't welcome in the living room where the cable comes into the house. I don't even notice the laptop, and it fits just like a book in the bookcase. Convenient! Add a small hub, or a 10/100 switch, and your private LAN party has internet access!
Re:Um....here's one reason.... (Score:1)
As for the issue of heat, I've had this laptop running 24/7 with only occasional shutdowns for over a year now. It does run a little hot, but I haven't had any problems.
Re:Laptop Cooling (Score:1)
Actually, yes (Score:3)
It's working just fine for me (Score:2)
The battery is almost finished; it lasts about 10 minutes at a time, which is fine as a UPS.
Laptops have some compromises in the name of portability, so I don't think it's worth the effort of going out and getting one just for this purpose. If you happen to have one ready to retire, it will do the job.
Of course. (Score:2)
Re:It's probably because... (Score:1)
Re:Actually, yes (Score:1)
How useful are old laptops, really? (Score:2)
Several others have mentioned the usefulness of old Laptops, but I'm not sure where they get this idea. If you are running windows (sorry, but it's useful sometimes), you aren't all that good off. I currently have Win95 on there with MS office, an FTP application, and a web browser. With more than two of these open at once, I almost want to put the poor processor out of it's misery. While I haven't tried installing Linux on the thing, would the performance really increase that much? I'm sure X would be struggling all the same. If this is the case, what better use than as a packet passer?
So what works? (Score:2)
Um....here's one reason.... (Score:2)
Re:10base PC Cards are cheaper now (Score:2)
By the time you buy that hub, you may as well have bought a Linksys unit. Thanks for shedding some light on configging two pc card nics on a laptop under OpenBSD, but it's a waste of a good laptop! The Linksys units or dlinks that can act as a firewall as well as a router are more flexible, and cost less then a lap top and are noisless as well. Also, be it a PC or a Laptop, I'd spend MORE time setting and tweaking that up then I would a Linksys. With the Linksys, while there still needs to be some thought involved, you don't have to edit text files and stop and restart services. It handles most of that on it's own. Also, with a Linksys, that's one less thing you have to buy for your home network. I don't want to think too much about geting a firewall up and going. I just want it to work. I am not saying that I expect the Linksys to be totally automatic, it's just that it's easier and even cheaper then using a old PC and a hub for a small home network. Also, I have about 20 more uses for even a old laptop that I would not want to waste it on a firewall.
Go for it... (Score:1)
Not only does it have a nice small form factor and not chew up the power of a desktop, you have 1-2 hrs of UPS power built right into the system, talk about fault tollerant.
The only issues with old laptops are disk/ram sizes and bizzare hardware, which if you take the time during an install are not really issues at all.
More power to you, if things workout well, post a How-to on it, someone else will need it someday.
Re:It's probably because... (Score:1)
Heat (Score:1)
Re:So what works? (Score:1)
A 486/100 with 16M is overkill. Mine has an 84M hard disk as well, and runs eXtremail server, a small http server, junkbuster proxy, and an FTP server.
It doesn't seem to work with two PCI NIC's though, so two PCMCIA NIC's might not work either.
I'd go with that cable/dsl router. (Score:1)
Go for it (Score:2)
The people who say that THEY would rather use your laptop than see you use it for a router, or that it is worth more as a laptop than an old P75 desktop, etc, are missing an important point: you HAVE the laptop, and you don't HAVE the desktop. Sure, you could sell your laptop on eBay, then buy a reconditiond PC on eBay, then you ship off your laptop, and someone else ships you the desktop, but the transaction cost (in dollars, time, and agravation) are almost certainly worth more than the extra potential value of the laptop. Of course if one of you wants to drive to this guys house, swap your desktop for his laptop, and hand him some cash to boot, that's different...
Good luck!
Re:How useful are old laptops, really? (Score:1)
Put linux on it, it'll run like a charm. Don't install X though, X is and has always been a hog. If you do install X, for heaven's sake don't use KDE or Gnome, use twm or one of the other ones. The problem you have under Windows in MS-Office, this will slow the mightiest mega-hurtz machine to a crawl.
still useful (Score:1)
Re:How useful are old laptops, really? (Score:1)
No Laptop (Score:1)
there are tons of people willing to give you money for that laptop (including me)
But there are also tons of people that would beg you to take an old p75 desktop off them.
My suggestion is get an old 486 or Pentium, and run Freesco off a Floppy, and you don't even need a HD or more than a 150Watt P/S.
If you want to, go for it...otherwise... (Score:1)