I just picked one of these up after work today and am using it as a DHCP server. I will also be adding caching-only DNS capability to it tomorrow. Didn't feel like futzing with it today.
It installs a Debian distro which is just enough different from RedHat/CentOS to be mildly frustrating, mostly around things like managing services. Overall it's very good, and frankly as a DHCP server it is no slower than the Mac mini which was serving up addresses. Yes, I could use something else for DHCP, but I prefer giving all of my known devices static dhcp addresses. What this means is that the config file contains a fixed-address for all of my devices at my house. So only unknown/guest devices should have a dynamic address inside the defined range I set up.
This makes administration easy, as the device sets to DHCP and the system gladly leases the same address over and over.
The cost was:
$44 / Raspberry PI with case.
$10 / Charger.
$13 / 16GB class 10 SD card.
Very cool, but not much to look at to be honest.
To manage I installed VNC server and connect via Chicken of the VNC for MAC.
How many "known" devices do I have?
pi@raspberrypi:/etc/dhcp$ grep -c fixed-address dhcpd.conf
31
pi@raspberrypi:/etc/dhcp$
I'll freely admit there was no compelling need for me to do this, I wanted to do this. For cheap, it's a good little device. Of course the height of weirdness was connecting this little computer to my new 27" Dell WQHD monitor for initial setup.
It installs a Debian distro which is just enough different from RedHat/CentOS to be mildly frustrating, mostly around things like managing services. Overall it's very good, and frankly as a DHCP server it is no slower than the Mac mini which was serving up addresses. Yes, I could use something else for DHCP, but I prefer giving all of my known devices static dhcp addresses. What this means is that the config file contains a fixed-address for all of my devices at my house. So only unknown/guest devices should have a dynamic address inside the defined range I set up.
This makes administration easy, as the device sets to DHCP and the system gladly leases the same address over and over.
The cost was:
$44 / Raspberry PI with case.
$10 / Charger.
$13 / 16GB class 10 SD card.
Very cool, but not much to look at to be honest.
To manage I installed VNC server and connect via Chicken of the VNC for MAC.
How many "known" devices do I have?
pi@raspberrypi:/etc/dhcp$ grep -c fixed-address dhcpd.conf
31
pi@raspberrypi:/etc/dhcp$
I'll freely admit there was no compelling need for me to do this, I wanted to do this. For cheap, it's a good little device. Of course the height of weirdness was connecting this little computer to my new 27" Dell WQHD monitor for initial setup.
