An x86-64 router with much of the latest and greatest built with commodity parts available on the market, third-party code & firmwares, and coming in at under 72 watts.
An argument has been made that you should use separate boxes for all this-- and those saying such things are right. But these are mostly *nix operating systems-- why bother having all these packages and software tools if you aren't going to use them?
A lot of what is out there has some fairly meager resources that seem robust compared to another piece of hardware with even more meager resources. "Wow, 2GB of storage!" No. Stop it.
This silent 'router' has a full fledged 64-bit quad-core Pentium at it's heart, capacity for 16GB of RAM, two SATA ports for all kinds of storage, an onboard Ethernet 100/1000 port, a USB 3.0 hub, a paralle port, room for a PCIe 4x Intel Pro 1000 VT Ethernet Card with four 100/1000 ports, a Compex WLE900VX 3x3 MIMO 802.11ac wireless card, and an Atheros AR5BXB112 3x3 MIMO 802.11n wireless card.
I got curious, how much would I have to spend to get everything I want? If 70% of my reasonable dreams cost ~$140, then 100% should cost $200 or so. Nope. Turns out ~$400.
The parts list is available here and on my blog.
I've started with OpenWRT to see how far I can get and what I can accomplish with it.
Next is pfSense.
Lastly, I would like to try IPFire.
And I welcome anyone to contribute and/or benefit from this endeavor. (Currently need help with OpenWRT configuration.)
This is the router I can build in the year 2015. I hope to build more as time passes and technology improves.