Server (piece of iron) as a gateway. Acceptable for the company?

Question

linux

We are updating the servers and thinking about purchasing an enterprise router. Is it worth buying it in a piece of hardware (Cisco, Mikrotik, etc.) or does it make sense to use an old server with Linux for this business?
Server HP DL360G4p 2x3.0 GHz Xeon (2 CPU, 2048cache)/2Gb PC2-3200/1x72Gb SCSI 10k Hot Swap/Smart Array 6i /Dual NC7782 Gigabit LAN /2xPower 2x460W/Rack 1U EURO

Answer 1

Depends on the size of the company and the requirements for the router.
In a small-medium business, it will be more profitable to use a PC, because. on it you will run routing, NAT, a shaper, you will keep statistics, raise heterogeneous tunnels - flexibly. Not too fancy used server equipment will do.

Answer 2

It depends on the tasks and size of the company.

Answer 3

I used to be for a soft router on Linux (that is, then it was on FreeBSD). After I remotely restored it a couple of times with the hands of a local admin, and once even rearranged it with the hands of a middle-aged aunt (!!) - I decided that if only routing / firewall functions are needed - only a piece of iron.
Advantages compared to softouter:
- great survivability - you have to try to kill mikrotik
- hardware encryption
- oops eats much less
Cons compared to softouter:
- it's only a router. For proxy-mail-something else, you will have to install a separate linux
- if it still dies, it will be more difficult to replace

Answer 4

Both solutions have good and not so good sides of the coin.
Iron has more ports and more threads (if we consider at least something comparable in cost to a server), but software has much more freedom.
If there are units in the rack - take the iron one, if you want only servers - take the soft one, the same router os.

Answer 5

Mikrotik seems to have a RouterOS that can be installed on a PC. I would take a piece of iron albeit more expensive.

Answer 6

Iron router pros:
- low power consumption
- some routers can, in case of failure, be temporarily replaced by a virtual machine
- iron encryption with high performance
Cons:
- you have to urgently smoke a new piece of iron if it suddenly burned out!)
- many manufacturers slaughter firmware
- additional functionality often costs a lot of money (software)
- often the piece of iron is not expandable