RE: ALIX boards: the open-source alternative to proprietary routers

Former Member — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 04:34:05 GMT

I need a suggestion, which board is the best to be used as a router embedded board?

RE: ALIX boards: the open-source alternative to proprietary routers

Former Member — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 17:41:02 GMT

you can flash just about any Linux OS (such as OpenBSD)

err... OpenBSD isn't Linux, not even close.

These boards are good for what they are, I've had the one in the photo for nearly 6 years. That says quite a lot, this technology is getting old.

As for "Qualcomm’s Atheros 250 mW DCMA–82" thats AR5xxx series, so probably over 10 years out of date by now. AR9xxx and wireless N might be a better idea ?

It's also misleading to say it has 2 miniPCIe slots, it has up to two miniPCI slots which is totally different. The 6f2 has a single USB only miniPCIe which you have to take with a pinch of salt since it lacks any PCIe functionality - indeed the chipset is a bit too old (and slow) for PCIe.

There's a bunch of other stuff you have to take into account, what you get for the asking price isn't much, 10/100 network is a problem today when internet connections are exceeding that and wifi can theoretically get you to 300 (I have an atheros a/b/g/n card in mine), and as you rightly point out the only display connection available is VGA and thats only on the 3d3.

Today you might even have reached the point where a standard x86 version of linux will no longer run on one of these - that's certainly the case for my Wrap board (the predecessor of the Alix)

Of course the advantage comes in flexibility over an off the shelf router - you're not stuck with the limit of 10 firewall rules (or whatever the number) you would have with a cheapo Linksys, Asus etc.

All that said, the Mikrotik routerboard stuff has pretty much eaten pcengines lunch with a generally cheaper product, a much bigger range and the ability to buy a packaged solution or a build it yourself from parts experience if that's what you want.

Finally, when you try to compare the cost of the Alix boards against a cheap Atom based PC it doesn't work out very well (hasn't for some time), the only thing the Alix has going for it is the small case that compares favourably with some small Linksys box.

What could be interesting would be for pcengines (or anyone else) to take something like an iMX6 processor and put it onto a new board with similar features to the Alix - just with gigabit wired ethernet ports and real PCIe. Probably didn't make any sense seven plus years ago when this was being designed, but could make a lot of sense today.