Surely something like OPNsense/PFsense would be better for the average user than setting up all the software manually?
How to turn anything into a router
11–20 of 276 posts
Re: How to turn anything into a router
#12if fancy a bit more of capability, dockerized opnsense and just play right with your vlans. One cable is enough into your switch...did I said managed... and your opn/telco eth exit.
Re: How to turn anything into a router
#13A router only really needs one network interface. Any computer with a single network interface, maybe even an (old) laptop, can be used. Anything x86 from at least the last 10 years is energy efficient and fast enough to route at gigabit speed. If you don't care about energy usage, any x86-based computer from the last 20 years is fast enough. The magic trick is to use VLANs, which require switches that support VLANs,…
Yes, but some folks are wary of using the same physical port for external and internal traffic. Fears of "VLAN hopping" remain, even if unfounded. Also, you'll hit a performance wall since you are sharing a single gigabit port between external and internal traffic. Obviously may not be an issue for many, but if you have gigabit fiber...
Re: How to turn anything into a router
#14I’ve been using OpnSense/pfsense [0] for years and would highly recommend it. It has a great automatic update experience, config backups, builtin wireguard tunnels and advanced features like packet filtering options via suricata.
When I am doing network management on my weekends, I’m so glad I’m not stuck in the Linux terminal learning about networking internals and can instead just go to a webui and configure my router.
Re: How to turn anything into a router
#15This will certainly work, but the whole mesh networking and more advanced aspects of a real wifi router won't really be present. I get by without it, but I can imagine some won't be able to.
If you're tech-savvy and building your own router, you can add those advanced aspects in if you want them. I'd be willing to bet, though, that the overwhelming majority of people who use consumer routers aren't doing anything remotely advanced. A how-to that covers the majority of use cases is valuable even when it excludes advanced use cases.
There are a whole lot of normal people using mesh networking Wi-Fi routers. Honestly, most of the least technical people that I know are all using mesh networks because their houses require it.
Re: How to turn anything into a router
#16[deleted]
Re: How to turn anything into a router
#17A router only really needs one network interface. Any computer with a single network interface, maybe even an (old) laptop, can be used. Anything x86 from at least the last 10 years is energy efficient and fast enough to route at gigabit speed. If you don't care about energy usage, any x86-based computer from the last 20 years is fast enough. The magic trick is to use VLANs, which require switches that support VLANs,…
Sounds interesting. I always wanted to use a Raspberry PI as router (to have one as backup in case the OpenWRT Linksys goes down), but couldn't wrap my head around properly how to overcome the single network port (I think the usual recommendation is to use an extra USB network card/adapter). Can you elaborate more about this VLAN stuff (you would put your modem, your router, and all your machines on the switch... and in the switch you tell the router connection to double use the connection for WAN and LAN separated via VLANs? And put the modem into the "WAN VLAN" too?)
Ideally the PI also should to what the extra DSL Modem does… but I guess that's where the dram must stop. :D
Re: How to turn anything into a router
#18Re: How to turn anything into a router
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not that I know of, why would that happen?
Wouldn’t all traffic be routed through the OS/processor on board?
A CPU from the last 20 years can route traffic at gigabit speed. It's only something to worry about for a Raspberry Pi3 or something similarly 'crippled'.
Re: How to turn anything into a router
#20A router only really needs one network interface. Any computer with a single network interface, maybe even an (old) laptop, can be used. Anything x86 from at least the last 10 years is energy efficient and fast enough to route at gigabit speed. If you don't care about energy usage, any x86-based computer from the last 20 years is fast enough. The magic trick is to use VLANs, which require switches that support VLANs,…
Yes, but some folks are wary of using the same physical port for external and internal traffic. Fears of "VLAN hopping" remain, even if unfounded. Also, you'll hit a performance wall since you are sharing a single gigabit port between external and internal traffic. Obviously may not be an issue for many, but if you have gigabit fiber...
I have gigabit fiber and none of this is an issue.
VLAN hopping is only possible due to misconfiguration. I'd like to be proven otherwise if that's not the case. VLANs are used EVERYWHERE where it matters. And no, the single port is absolutely not a bottleneck because the port is full-duplex.