[TriLUG] Using a Single Board Computer for a network appliance

[Joseph S. Tate via TriLUG]

On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 6:05 AM Mauricio Tavares via TriLUG <
trilug at trilug.org> wrote:

>       To handle DNS/DCHP tasks you do not need much at all. Even a
> lowly Pi zero may suffice; it might even handle pi-hole. Now, main
> reason to run a Pi is because that is the first name people think for
> a small single board computer; debian has a table[1][2] of them.
>
> I've learned that the community behind the SBC is more important than the
capability with regards to long term OS support. My ODroid C2 is only a
couple of years old, but ODROID never merged their stuff into a permanent
project, so it's all but obsolete now.

> I have a Raspberry Pi 4, or I run docker on my always on desktop. I feel
> > like the Raspberry Pi running pi-hole + ??? would be a good plan. Any
> > contrary thoughts? Is it going to be fast enough for gigabit networking?
> > Should I try running OpenWRT instead?
> >
>
>       Do you now mean running it as a router? If so, I take you are
> planning on running it in a router-in-a-stick mode.   I have been told
> the pi4 has a true gigabit connection[3] (someone was getting 856
> Mbits/sec doing iperf tests[4] on the pi4), but I think it is really
> comparable to many of the routers you can out openwrt on which
> advertise gigabit ports. In the end of the day it boils down to how
> often you will be pushing your (I suppose it to be a) gigabit
> connection to its limit and beyond.
>

No, I wasn't planning on routing. My experiences with Gigabit adapters have
been disappointing. I'd leave the NAT/Firewall/Router on the AT&T device,
just turning off DHCP/DNS. I'm thinking about OpenWRT because I know well
how to configure dnsmasq from the Web UI to do what I want, but PiHole is
new to me. PiHole does seem to have a UI for configuring DNSMasq though,
and I'm ok with cli configuration too.

-- 
Joseph Tate