Now that I have time for hobbies again I wanna dive right in to building up a home lab. Right now I just have a Netgear router that reached end of life, and a NAS i'd like to make accessible remotely, and a DIY router seems like the correct next step for me. I'm very interested in ad-blocking network wide and someday I'd like to host my own little webpage, but for now I'm really just barely getting started.

I'm information gathering, I don't know what I don't know and my networking skills are pretty weak anyway. But even if your needs and desires have nothing to do with mine, I also just like to hear people talk about their set ups. Please? ๐ŸŒž

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] 15 points 14 hours ago* (3 children)

I bought a firewall appliance based on an Intel CPU, with 4x 2.5gbps Ethernet ports, 8gb ram. Installed opnSense on it and been super happy even since!

A bit pricey the hardware, but it's been totally rock solid for almost two years now.

I have configured unbound with ad blocking on opnSense, and it has every single option I would ever want on it. Amazing stuff.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [โ€“] [S] 1 point 12 hours ago (1 child)

    I've seen a lot of people on YouTube talking about this or that cast off networking device that they turned into a router. I do find the idea of repurposing especially old tech appealing. Or did you buy it brand new?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment