By taking a closer look at the actual build itself (hardware and software), the testing processes we used, and why we used them, hopefully any Ars readers of average technical abilities will be able to put together their own DIY speed machine. Naturally, many readers asked the obvious follow-up-'How exactly can we put that together?' Today it's time to finally pull back the curtain and offer that walkthrough. With nearly any speed metric we analyzed, our little DIY kit outpaced routers whether they were of the $90- or $250-variety. Building a homebrew router turned out to be a better proposition than we could've ever imagined. A properly configured program does not require the constant presence of an administrator, and demonstrates good fault tolerance and reliability in standalone operation.Further Reading Numbers don’t lie-it’s time to build your own routerAfter finally reaching the tipping point with off-the-shelf solutions that can't match increasing speeds available, we recently took the plunge. It should be noted that RouterOS is installed on a clean hard drive and cannot work as a second operating system (for example, with Windows). On the official website there is a large amount of documentation, which developers maintain up to date.

The WinBox graphical utility is used for configuration besides, there is a possibility to access settings through the web-interface or SSH terminal, as well as through serial COM-port and HyperTerminal. The user is provided with a selection of the desired components during installation. The system supports a large number of protocols and network interfaces, allowing you to use the computer, depending on the purpose, as a firewall, VPN server, FTP server, proxy server, wired or wireless access point and much more.

It is also possible to install the system on a personal computer compatible with i386 architecture, thus turning it into a router. RouterOS is an operating system from MikroTik, primarily designed for network hardware based on RouterBOARD and used to manage routers.

Router os for pc