Soekris so far

[ewx]

Steve gave me a Soekris net4501. I've been gradually getting this into shape for use as the house router. This page covers the details in case anyone else attempts something similar; some aspects were not entirely trivial.

Testing reveals that it can route data at (at least) 24Mbit/second, which is comfortably faster than the nominal speed of our Internet connection. It's much slower than the nominal speed of the house wireless but actually marginally faster than the measured speed, so I'm not worried about that either.

(“At least” 24Mbit/s because that could be a limit somewhere other than the Soekris.)

Usefully for the testing it turns out that crossover cables are no longer necessary, at least when connecting the Soekris to a modern Mac (and for all I know any other modern hardware).

Comments

[dotwaffle.livejournal.com]

It is not an optional part - it's part of the 802.3ab standard that 1000BASE-T implements. Included within 1000BASE-T (on copper at least) is negotiated speed, duplex, MDIX and clocking.

It is possible to turn it off, and indeed for fibre connections it quite often is turned off, but provided you're using Cat5e (copper) cable or higher, you're advised to leave it turned on.