Are there any nostriches out there that has built their own router instead of running all the spyware from Asus etc? Would love to hear what HW and software you used and your overall experience with it
Discussion
I flashed routers with the Freifunk firmware. There is open firmware for existing routers. No need to solder.
Never heard of Freifunk but I'll check it out
Probably not really relevant for your usecase. The argument was just that you can flash your router, which I did for Freifunk. I lived in an apartment building at the time and during summer, all the apartments around filled with tourists but didn't have Wifi, so I provided free wifi for up to 50 devices using Freifunk.
I installed PFSense on a AliExpress Protectli clone. It works great.
Seems like a lot of people like pfsense. Do you have a link to that clone?
No, it was a couple years ago. But here's one that looks just like it.
Running open-wrt and Asus-wrt merlin here.
I used to play with DD-WRT, Tomato and OpenWRT in different routers. All have their pros and cons. You need to have a router the firmware works with, you have to be comfortable flashing the router to overwrite stock firmware and you also need to be comfortable doing all of your own config within the router. Mess that up and it won't work or worse you've created a huge security problem for your home network.
I now run pfsense on a homemade firewall/VPN server. I repurposed an old Dell Optiplex microATX motherboard with Intel i7 and added an Intel 4-port ETH card; installed in 1U server chassis in my server rack. You could also do on something like a Protectli Vault device, which you can get for a few hundred $ on Amazon, depending on which one you want, number of ports, etc. I don't have one but have read good things.
Also, there are great tutorials on Youtube on how to set up pfsense. My favorite step-by-step guide was done a few years ago by another pleb EconoAlchemist; here is is post:
https://www.econoalchemist.com/post/bitcoin-home-mining-network-privacy
While this was written around bitcoin miners this is still perfectly relevant to those not mining. Even covers how to create and isolate various home networks from each other (e.g., keep your IP devices on a separate home network from your computers, etc). He did a fantastic job with this; highly recommend throwing him a few sats if you find value in this.
