Old PC To New Router With Gentoo Linux

[dbarrow]

http://cyber-knowledge.net/blog/2006/09/01/old-pc-to-new-router-with-gentoo-linux/

Don’t throw that old PC away just yet, it still has some life in it yet. No matter how bad your old PC is it can always be used as a router, and your old router as a switch. All you need is two nic cards for it ...

[Tortanick]

I would use IPcop (http://ipcop.org/) rather than gentoo, it turns that old computer into a fully featured firewall, and has plenty of add-ons. My favourie addons are urlfilter (blacklists) advanced proxy (powerfull cacheing server) and copfilter (spam/virus filter)

Its also extremly easy, command line and ssh are needed to install new addons but the rest can be done through a webgui like a router.

Routers/firewalls arn't all you can use old PCs for (though they seem to be the favourite) you can set up probobly any kind of server, (for fun I set up a STMP, TSL, POP, IMAP server with spam and virus filtering.

MythTV (http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythFeatures) is another one if you have the hardware for it. Easiest with a presetup ISO (http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/KnoppMyth)