TR Forums

I'm in the market for a router that features a built-in bittorrent client. I want a low power device that can download torrents so I don't have to leave my power guzzling desktop on overnight, and a router seems like a good choice for this (worry not, I don't download music, movies, or games over BT). Wireless support is not important, but affordability is. I've also considered a NAS with this capability, but it seemed a bit much for what I need (and a bit expensive).

My main concern is that I don't really know what to look for. The only BT capable router I've seen so far is the Asus RT-N16, which is also DD-WRT compatible (which is nice, but also not a requirement). I've been told that router needs to have enough onboard memory to handle sufficiently sized routing tables in order to handle BT well, the RT-N16 has 128MB onboard which I was told was good enough for that. I imagine the other necessity would be a USB 2.0 port so the router has someplace to actually put the files.

Does anyone else here have recommendations or tips on what to look for?

I don't have any real suggestions but I would hope that good BT-ready routers would be able to download/seed torrents hosted on a network share as well as using external USB HDDs.

Have you thought about getting a router that supports DD-WRT or Tomato? Those two firmwares have some features that P2P users can benefit from.

DancinJack wrote:

Have you thought about getting a router that supports DD-WRT or Tomato? Those two firmwares have some features that P2P users can benefit from.

I already have a Linksys WRT54GL with DD-WRT on it. Looks like I have some research to do.

Kurotetsu wrote:

I already have a Linksys WRT54GL with DD-WRT on it. Looks like I have some research to do.

Get Tomato. It is so much easier (and intuitive) to configure.

I suspect you would be better off just buying the parts and building a low power system. There are inexpensive Atom motherboards available. I would go with a low power Athlon II, integrated graphics motherboard, and a mirror made of two laptop drives. If you want something with a little more class, put it all into a small form factor enclosure. After it is setup just remote into it.

You could also pick up a refurbished netbook or laptop cheap which gives you a free UPS but I prefer systems which are repairable and recoverable.

Or you could get a NAS with BT function. Synology's NASes are pretty cheap ($100 up) and support BT as well as 2 TB drives. I'm looking at getting a 2x2 TB NAS setup in the near future.

Voldenuit wrote:

Or you could get a NAS with BT function. Synology's NASes are pretty cheap ($100 up) and support BT as well as 2 TB drives. I'm looking at getting a 2x2 TB NAS setup in the near future.

Yeah, the DS110j for $150 looks nice. I thought it could get what I wanted for cheaper, but its rapidly looking like it wouldn't be worth the effort (and I'd have to spend between $80 and $100 for a new router anyway).

Try this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833320038
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Op ... ent_client

Just attach an external storage device to it and it should be fairly trivial to set things up from inside dd-wrt, which is the router's default firmware.