[bjoeg]

I need some tips on which kind of hardware to use with the following:

15/15Mbit VDSL line
35 households connected
1-2 handful og QoS rules

At the moment I am using a WRT54GL, which I can see is underpowered when line is being filled with traffic.

I was hoping an ITX board with either VIA C7 or Intel Atom, but has also been looking at Soekris boards (net5501). However will these be powerful enough?

I will at best use a small factor PC since it will have to fit in a small wiring closet.

[Sash]

ok the gl should work with that line but if u need more power use a alix or avila

[bjoeg]

If WRT54GL would be sufficient, then the CPU usage lies It show 90-100% when the line is being bombarded.

Remember some of these households have found the world of P2P.

And IIRC on some other part of the DD-WRT forum I found a post saying when you use QoS, performance of many SOHO route will drop significantly.

[olmari]

QoS is CPU intensive, but this is exactly the reason you will want an x86 DD-WRT Really any old Pentium 3 will do just awesomely, newer than that is just a bonus. I honestly don't know how performant VIA C7 would be... Personally I started with simple old Pentium 3 but after PSU died on it I just bought basically new cheapest PC could get, which was at that moment amd 4200+ and some nvidia mobo I paid something like litle over 200 euros from whole unit which included Nexus NX-8040 quality PSU.

[Sash]

nobody mentions the energie cost per year!!! WHY??

alix ~14€ per year (8w, maybe 6w without mpci cards)
pc ~87€ per year (50w)

in 1.5 years the alix has payed himself with the saving on energie.

no further comment....

[bjoeg]

Really guys, thanks for your input.
But can we agree that activating QoS will require CPU power, and are the Avila/Soekris etc. sufficient enough for that kind of QoS?

I dont wanna have the households spit in for an Avila, if it turns out that QoS needs more juice than it can handle.

And regarding finding an old P3. I could probably do that, but it is hard to find a P3 in ITX form factor. As mentioned it will have to fit in an old wiring closet. And as Sash mentioned, then there is the power.