New Project: Building A Router

[Bubba Bob]

Ok, on my quest for better VOIP quality, Im going to build my own router using spare parts and with a budget of around $50. Im going to use this as a router with QOS management, print server, firewall, and eventually a file server.

The base machine is an AMD Athlon 900mhz, 512MB ram, and a 5 gig hard drive. Tonight Ill be ordering 5 PCI NICs, as well as a KVM switch.

Now, I need help on a couple things.

1) What would be a good Linux distro for this? It needs to fit on a 5 gig hard drive. No fancy features needed. (Freesco is out of the question)

2) The main purpose of this home-made router is to improve my phone calls. How do I go about doing this? I need the NIC with my VOnage adapter to have priority over everything else.

Thanks BT,

Bubba

[Besttechie]

I personally recommend Smoothwall for the OS side of things:

http://smoothwall.org

B

[Bubba Bob]

I personally recommend Smoothwall for the OS side of things:

http://smoothwall.org

B

Thanks B. Looks exactly like what I'm looking for.

[Besttechie]

No Prob. Glad to help.

B

[Breen]

There's really no need for five NICs on the actual router. What you need is two NICs and a simple switch: one NIC for the WAN side of the router and the other NIC connected directly to the switch which then in turn connects to your other computers.