Using linux as a router

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e151280

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I've been using Linksys, Netgear and SMC routers (testing) on a home lan, for p2p & torrent uploading & downloading, and have noticed that high throughput frequently causes my routers to hang. Research & discussions with other network folks seem to indicate that although my configurations for port forwarding, firewall, etc are correct, the number of simultaneous connections is exhausting the limited memory of my routing devices.

I am now considering using a P4-2.0ghz, 1024MB ram, 80 GB Hdd LINUX system (Suse 9.2, dual nics, firewalls & self built routing tables) as a router to see if the additional memory of a full computer will handle the hundreds (thousands?) of concurrent connections used by torrent software better than a dedicated hardware router, based on the additional ram available.

Based on how NAT theory works, the routing device has to "remember (in memory)" where each connection comes from, and where to route packets back to. Since the newer p2p & torrent packages initiate a multitude of connections, it's my guess that a routing device with more memory would handle the connections better.

Anyone have any comments/insights on this idea?
 
makes sense, good luck, let me know how it goes, it'd be nice to see a tutorial if you wouldnt mind.
 
If you are willing to sacrifice a powerful machine like that for a dedicated NAT router, then it would solve many of your current problem. It's definitely worth it to add more processing power and ram to a router if it's being overloaded.

Of course now you'll have to worry about application layer security issue. Since a conventional router don't work at this layer it's much more secure than a Operating System.
 
definitely, but now he should be able to implement a more powerful firewall to keep "pings of death" away from his main system, just have to keep the linux system clean and a ghost image(or other system image) in case something were to happen.
 
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