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Gamers have been through thick and thin with their old gaming rigs: online battles, quests and adventures. It seems wasteful to retire it to their grandmother's word processing and email (they know it's Christmas slippers she wants anyway). Don't give up on it there is much better use for that old warhorse, even without a video card.
Burning up that old rig on cryptomining is unlikely to cover the electric bill, however, add a network card or two and a Wi-Fi card and the practical possibilities open up. It has plenty of guts, more than enough to hold its own and then some against mainstream routers. That is how FreeBSD and Linux got going in the 90s, born out of frustration over exorbitant brand-name router prices and the need for something robust and affordable. People knew there was no magic in packet routing and filtering, turning to Unix to power their PCs into routers. That bare-knuckles enthusiasm of sticking it to the man changed everything. Now the man sponsors it – it is strictly business.
In a curious twist opensource migrated to mass produced routers. So, what is inside? Marketing hype, a parade of edgy moulded plastic cases and low performance general purpose CPUs with limited features, but dedicated, inexpensive switching fabric. The result? For fixed switching it looks impressive, but in terms of utility in network management, not so much. The same money for a x86 mini-PC with LAD achieves higher performance in switching and superior features. Why? About ten years ago x86's overall performance took a great leap to keep up with Windows' bloat.
Consider LAD , a complete, fully-featured network appliance in one software module, built from the foundation of fourth-gen commercial grade forensic-class packet capture appliances designed and built for years right here in Oregon . Featuring 100% capture up to 10Gbps and millions of packets per second sustained, with all the bells and whistles, the key was security and performance, without detracting from either. Today's LAD is much bigger, with integrated blackholing, full DNS management plus DNS-level firewalling, low-latency switching and lateral isolation of devices, so nothing can jump from one client to another. Automatic and real-time per-device and per-domain reporting down to single packets, gaming server uptime monitoring via ping and full packet capture help pinpoint connectivity issues, while seamless domain blacklisting delivers ad-free and tracking-free internet by timing-out ad server domains and cookies to boot. All with stable, low-latency network performance, minus the classic CLI.
LAD requires 4GB RAM, a SATA HDD and a compatible network card. Consider the i350-T4 with four ports. An AX210 brings Wi-Fi 6E triband wireless with full support for 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz and 6Ghz bands. LAD's pedigree in packet capture enables full wireless monitoring and capture, while simultaneously routing with 1/10,000,000 second accuracy.
Providing network mastery suits that old gaming rig and saves a buck or two. Skip wondering what the old router is doing or where the speed issues and dropped connections are originating. LAD cleans up connections without separate pi-hole, OpenDNS or whatnot. Integrated into the core, LAD's native LateralDNS introduces no latency – it is slick, easy-to-use and wirespeed. Installation is a snap: place the bootx64.efi on a USB stick, plug it in and reboot. Running LAD on that old rig delivers superior routing and switching performance, plus a host of network security and management features.
The downside: that gaming rig slurps the juice. But, since they already have it, it makes sense to run it for a year or two, then switch to a J4125 or N5105 mini-PC with four or six built-in i225 or i226 ports. LAD's support for them is great: stable and worry free. The great thing about the J4125 or N5105? Low-cost, multigigabit network performance with LAD and quiet fanless operation, consuming 10-15W.
About LAD. Short for LateralAccessDevice from IPCopper, Inc. Why lateral? Because it manages network flows laterally, as well as vertically. IPCopper has been in the business of network appliances for over a decade, making commercial appliances for business and government. We built something we are proud to use ourselves. Quality software is made by good engineers here at home. Check back for more practical, common-sense features – we're on a roll!
Media contact:
Kathryn Ash
350198@email4pr.com
503-290-0110
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