Wi-Fi router on Debian from scratch Part 1 - Hardware

This article is the first part of installing and configuring Debian Linux based home wireless router step by step from scratch.

Here's the features that should be implemented:

• Replacement of Asus WL-500gP router, including:
• Sharing Internet access for local network
• Wi-Fi access point with white list support
• Port forwarding for internal servers to accessed from the Internet
• Full IPv4 and IPv6 support in Dual-Stack mode
• + More features

To make it possible following steps need to be performed:

1. Assembling and configuring hardware
2. Installing Debian Wheezy 7.8.0 (latest on March 2015) on dedicated hardware
3. Configuring Internet access based on dedicated IPv4 via DHCP
4. Configuring Wi-Fi adapter as access point and part of internal network
5. Set up DHCP to assign addresses to clients automatically
6. Configuring NAT to share Internet access with clients
7. Configuring iptables  to protect internal network and make internal servers visible from Internet ("Virtual server" feature on WL-500gP)

1. Assembling and configuring hardware

Requirements to hardware of router:

• Low noise
• Low power consumption
• Gigabit Ethernet support
• 802.11 a/g/n wireless
• Enough processing power to add features, like Web-server

I decided to use Mini-ITX form-factor for this setup, and here is the list of hardware assembled together:

1. Motherboard with CPU: Intel® Desktop Board D525MW - no fan = no noise
2. Memory: 2x Kingston ValueRAM KVR1333D3S9/1G - 2 Gigs is more than enough, actually.
3. SSD: Kingston SV300S37A/60G - no moving parts = no noise, low power
4. Secondary NIC: D-Link DGE-528T Copper Gigabit PCI Card
5. Wireless adapter: Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6205 
6. PS: Seasonic SS-300TFX - silent and reliable PSU with Active PFC
7. Case: Winard Mini-ITX case with additional 60*60mm fan, plugged into CPU fan connector - no noise without load.
8. DVD writer: Pioneer DVR-TD10RS - to ease the installation of OS. In fact, optical drives on servers are rarely used for another purposes.
9. Not part of router, but part of setup is 8-port HP V1405-8G Switch, cause I have more than 4 wired Ethernet clients, and those 4 ports on Asus WL-500gP were not enough.

After assembling this altogether we need to enter BIOS setup to configure some settings, like:

Power > After Power Failure <Power On> - to be sure router will boot up after AC comes back.

Also it's convenient to make DVD-drive to boot first.

And that's it for hardware! 

Next time I will try to shed light on the OS installation.