Networking at home

I would like to have an always on server for my home network, and altrough I have already two ARM based routers which can be customized, I would like to have an x86 based computer, because it is much easier to install linux programs on it and normally they have faster processors and more memory than the ARM counterparts. I would like to use it for 3 functions: To be the center of the home network with an Apache based WEB interface, whcih can do all network related tasks Install an Asterisk PBX and connect all our phones to it, including mobile phones via Bluetooth Be a storage backup server with two Tbyte or close to Tbyte SATA hard disks Earlier I had a 3G/HSDPA WLAN gateway created from an old laptop, and with the HDD and display switched off, it consumed only 10W, but I was considering to have a modern desktop motherboard with a Intel E2160 or simmilar processor to reach a good power consumption. Before going into this I checked the power consumption of different solutions ...

After long monthes of perfect working, last week my internet connection trough the W25 started to become very unstable, most of the time even not working. Looking at the statistics it turned out that something hapened in the network, which increased the speed of my connection :-), but after approximately one day, the connection became unstable and was more down that working. My first guess was, that my operator has upgraded the serving cell from 3,6 Mbps to 7,2 and the 7D firmware I was using may have a bit buggy radio module. So I started the upgrade. First I have upgraded to 11A, because I have downloaded that already before, and with the bad connection I could not check if there is a better FW available. The upgrade from the WEB UI went pretty smothly, after waiting a lot for checking the radio module FW version, the procedure ended without any problem. I was a bit afraid, that my root password will be changed, but the upgrade behaved correctly and did not change my credien...