Journal: I wanted to make my own router!

Yesterday, while I was drooling over hardware on tigerdirect.ca, I came accross the servers section. And damn, 1U rack servers are sexy as hell.

Then I looked around my PC room and noticed the stupid, small, weak, noobish SMC wireless home router sitting on my second desk beside my second PC.

So I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I built my own linux-based router in a 1U rack case? Wouldn't it be both efficient and stylish? And I won't even have to get killer hardware since a router isn't exactly the most power-hungry machine.

I returned to tigerdirect and filled my cart with low-end hardware, selecting a VIA C3 processor because it doesn't heat much at all, and because the PadLock encryption features could really be nice on OpenVPN's performances. I thought I had a pretty good deal, until I checked the 1U rack cases on another website...

300$+ for a damn metal case? That's just nonsense. I can get a killer desktop case for this very same price. Why would they charge that much for a small metal box with a sloppy 250W power-supply? That just makes no sense! So I guess the SMC router is going to stay around for awhile...