Should You Build Your Own Router?

I'm getting myself a Mini PC from AliExpress which has 4x 2.5Gbe NICs and a N5105 CPU - Going to use OPNSense on it or maybe Router OS 7.

There are a few AsiaRf WiFi cards that work pretty good. I'm currently on 600mbps ISP speed and I can saturate it on wifi. Also, being told I can go over 1Gbps, since it supports WiFi 6e. The one I use is the AW7916-NPD, but the 7915 is also good. They are all under $40 USD.

Wi-fi complicates things big time.
If you can't find a Linux-compatible USB adapter, you end up with one extra appliance (like the Ubiquity) and power consumption nearly doubles.
On the other hand, having a conventional router can leave the customer vulnerable to attacks because the manufacturer "forgets" to fix all the bugs in the firmware.

I'm behind CG-NAT so I jump the gap by serving wireguard on a VPS and connect some local systems to that VPS. this way i get a well defined and secure network without port forwarding when I'm out and about

Goddamn 32¢/kWh is insane. I just started paying for my electricity at the new apartment I just moved into. Typical electricity is 9.92¢/kWh but I switched to a provider that’s almost entirely solar and wind powered and got it down to 4.7¢/kWh 💀

"My openwrt install with very basic packages take 57mb" is a riddiculous statement. You have gigantic packages installed. You can fit within 8mb and do a lot of the things you want to do with openwrt.

There is a good middle ground, get an Openwrt compatible Mikrotik router and flash it on it instead of their (for most people too complicated) OS.

Still debating between openwrt and opnsense. Have the components needed for both. Have both set up as a lab to work out the kinks.

From the standpoint of what I want to do, it's quite simple; segregate off sections - guest wifi, work machines, NAS storage, lab, phones & tablets, and IOT, while having an ingress back in while out ( VPN ) .. Still working out the VPN access.

So no aes-ni in the ga-imb1900tn? Otherwise, nice set of ports, especially dual intel nic...

hang on a minute... the aliexpress thingy is really nice considering all of the hardware headaches you avoid yourself but... it does not have PoE for a Ubiquiti access point!

I really enjoy how positive the Homelab community is, mostly. Loved the Jeff Geerling shot out

Can't thank you enough for this video!

"Can you please give me the theme design, which makes the OpenWRT router login page more stunning?" @wolfgang

Can you look into OPNsense? I’m running it and love it. It’s similar to and alternative to pfSense with better compatibility/support for some NICs (e.g. Intel i-226V)

Why does Ian get 2 network ports? ;-)

Is this still current for current date?

Is it possible to build server on Intel® Desktop Board D945GCLF ?

Do you know of any VDSL cards or dongles?

Thats what I have done - bridged the modem and run an Aliexpress mini pc with 4 ethernet ports to my switch. It all virtualised on Proxmox, so I have the router running on one vm with two nics passed through, and another ubuntu vm running in another vm with its own nic. The fourth nic is the management interface for proxmox.

mt7921 exists for wifi 6e now and driver support exists for linux kernel 5.12+. Doesn't have the intel AP bug

Everything depends on the country you are living in and your provider. I got wifi6 fiber-ready router with 2.5Gb ethernet slots for free to my plan. For additional ~4€/month got wifi6 extender. I can set VPN stright on the router and in years never had any problems with it.

❤ super Video

I still use my old Apple router which has Ac wifi and gigabit Ethernet, which is faster than my internet speed but is locked down in true Apple style. However I now run a little web server and wonder if I should increase my security, as I do get more instances of probing from the internet. That can at times effect my internet detrimentally until my web server blocks the IPs automatically.

Very useful videos, thank you.

Can you recommend a Low Power Modem as well or is the Fritzbox in only "Modem use" Power efficient. I was also looking into a small pcie Card for the newer AliExpress boxes to have WiFi Ap behind Firewall but those Intel cards dont Support AP Mode any recommendation for wifi6?

I watch foreign bloggers like you, everyone is worried about electricity

Great stuff, thx!

how to run ubiquiti sw if your homebuilt router is runing pfsense and only a Unifi access point is connected?

Curious to get your thoughts on an "off the shelf" option such as GLiNET Flint

since you mentioned Romania, you usually get an ethernet cable and then you can do whatever you want, ranging from using your PC with PPPoE dial-in all the way to dedicated routers of more or less complexity. the standard is open, you have freedom. In Germany on the other hand it boggles my mind to see that FritzBox has monopoly over the device you get at home for cable or DSL. it's a free market, how come??? why this vendor lock-in?? why other hardware manufacturers don't protest against this situation? even worse, you barely find any documentation about how to set up your own hardware if you don't want to use the FritzBox from the provider. and speaking of own routers, I currently use a Draytek Vigor 166 as DSL Modem, a fanless PC with Intel I5, 6GB RAM, 6 ethernet ports ordered directly from Ali Express and Sophos as router, and a Cisco WAP371 access point. When I'll need more ports I have proper Cisco switches in the basement waiting to be deployed. I have a 600Mbit connection from M-Net.
Gruß aus München!!!

that was an excellent way to start the video, thank you for your honesty, I will not watch it but I upvoted for fairness

I see the thumbnail and channel, and I know I'm in for a treat.

I live in The Netherlands. The government passed a law a couple years ago that went into effect last year that requires ISPs to allow you to connect you own equipment without using their equipment at all. They are also required to provide the necessary information for doing that.

This means that I could disconnect not just my ISPs router, but also the ONT required for converting the fiber signal to copper network cable.

AES-NI support was also the thing that made having encrypted storage relatively painless as well. Probably the most useful instruction addition to have, even before native virtualization support.

Beryl (GL-MT1300) $70-75

Back in about 2003 when broadband internet at home was a single computer connected to a cable modem by USB or a network cable into the back of your cable TV box, we HAD to build our own router, there was no other affordable choice.
And even then, the real routers, which nobody could afford, didn't have the MAC spoofing required to get it to work, as the cable company would only talk to the single register MAC and the only way to do that was with their windows only software.

So we took a Pentium 90 with 32Mb of EDO RAM, two Intel NICs with Linux supported offboard TCP acceleration and a pair of floppy drives.
This then booted, off of two floppies, the ultra compact Linux router distro LRP, the Linux Router Project and it's descendents.
The second floppy allowed us to add IP QoS and VPN support. Not bad for 20 years ago.

I'm using an HP T520 with a RTL8153 USB 3.0 Gigabit dongle. All is good so far (not tested speed using iperf3 yet). I have the 8GB SSD (using 24MB so far) which it came with installed, but downgraded the RAM to a 1GB stick I got for free (it has about 600MB RAM free). I previously used a "BT Home hub 5.0 type A" with OpenWRT on, but the throughput was only about half of what it should have been so my 300Mb/s pipe appeared to be 150Mb/s :'( ! I still use a couple of these as a seperate dumb APs (I have about 7 now, I neep getting given them).

I love your tech topics!

Hello there, your videos are really helpful. I wanted to build a 10gbit router from an dell optiplex with a i5-6500 and 16gb ddr4 ram with an SSD. I wanted to install a QNAP QXG-10G2TB NIC into it. For all extra devices i wanted to install a 10Gbit network switch. As i am from germany like you i would like to build a more efficient system. I am not sure if my decision to go for a used optiplex and using it is a good one.

do you still need a switch or just use the 4 ports if u go with the aliexpress router? also im assuming just gota use 1 of the port for access point to enable wifi?

Study shows, that real friends do not let their friends use proprietary routers, experts say.

just curious, what is the power drained from the Fritzbox?

better to take Netgate2100 for the same money

how about comparing the DIY router with mikrotik rb750gr3 ? the price only $70 on Amazon and it got 5 port ethernet and fully customized router, also it run on 12 volt DC power supply

I use an ISP router, but I needed WiFi for the back of the house. I had an old TPLink WiFi router lying around WiFi 135Mbps, Ethernet 100Mbps, it had an Ethernet WAN connector. I use Ethernet for my 3 computers and the WiFi for; my wife's laptop; the bedroom TV and our phones. To get a faster connection between my 3 computers I've added a 1Gbps switch ($15). To improve security for the router I've changed userid and password; updated the firmware; closed the router for all inbound traffic and only allowed admin access through the MAC addresses of my laptop and desktop. Who needs more?

all parts hard to find T_T
i'm interested with custom but imma buy omada instead

First thing first. Have your isp-router connected and connect your own to it. That way you don’t get that family-aggro when they want to watch netflix and you experimenting.