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? 🌞
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I’m running pfSense on an old Intel Atom fanless mini PC with 6 ethernet ports. I use pfBlocker for ad blocking. I also installed a GPS module in it. That’s the clock source for the NTP server. I was planning on replacing it with something newer, but that’s not happening until memory prices come down.
I would not recommend using pfSense anymore. My next router will be running OPNsense. I will probably install Adguard Home on that for ad blocking.
Right now I’m using a Fortigate 101E, but eons back I used a simple PC built as cheaply as possible, installed Linux, ip_forward = 1, and iptables.
I am, however, tempted to build something semi-professional based on a banana pi, as I need something custom for work.
I just put OpenWRT on a (at this point quite old) TP-Link non-DIY home router. The only thing wrong with it is that it isn’t a rack-mountable rectangle, which offends my perfectionism.
I don’t care if TP-Link thinks it’s EOL as long as OpenWRT doesn’t. You should check the supported devices list for your current hardware.
Opnsense on whatever. Plus pihole for DNS/adblock.
I put Opnsense on an Intel Pentium G3220 and it’s been rock solid for gigabit.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters AP WiFi Access Point DNS Domain Name Service/System PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express PiHole Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole) PoE Power over Ethernet Unifi Ubiquiti WiFi hardware brand
6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 14 acronyms.
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I had a virtualized PFsense box for a while doing my inherent. Was actually pretty solid even when having to wrangle the quirks having a virtualized firewall/router caused.
I have something similar it’s been working great.
I have been thinking of trying to set up a “router on a stick” as a live backup but once I started researching it, it got daunting.
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.
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?
I’m eyeing a similar one, but with 2x sfp+ ports too.
My setup consists of an x86 “network appliance”. They’re low-cost, low-power, sometime headless units that can run most any open-source software solution. Even with RAM as bad as it is, you can find these for less than $200 from multiple sources if you’re okay with 2.5Gbps. If you did need more than that, you’d have to build something custom likely, unless it’s a small-business class device.
If you’re just getting into the network software side of things, I recommend experimenting off-Internet for a while with a few different operating systems. Find which one has a user-interface you enjoy and can wrap your head around since in a personal homelab, they almost all meet the requirements. My personal choice for software ended up being OPNSense.
I run all of my other services that aren’t network related on separate hardware via a managed switch just to keep things isolated and the rest is up to you.
Not sure how “DIY” you want to go. I’ve been liking OPNSense though. Running it on an air cooled Protectli box.
Handles a symmetric 2Gbps connection just fine.
Originally I was thinking I’d find a used business mini pc and put some open source router OS on there, still haven’t picked which one. But I’ve gotten super into, like, being cautious about power consumption and some of the little boxes you can get on AliExpress seem like that might be a better option? I’m not sure yet. What’s a Protectli, if you don’t mind?
This is what I’m doing too. I’m super happy with the results and how many options are now open to me.
OpenWRT all the way.
Skynet firewall
PiHole
Stable IP addresses and a private interface for family phones/laptops/pcs
Guest network for nasty Roku TV/peleton
I never even thought about a guest network for different services. Why do you do that, if you don’t mind? Privacy?
You could configure different settings, such as preventing the device from connecting to ad servers. You also prevent it from scanning your network to learn about all your devices, since all it would be limited to that isolated network.
I have a Flint 2 with OpenWRT installed, it handles all my home networking. I have a handful of vLANs and I think the count is still 5 APs. I am currently considering adding a 6th for HA to TV vLAN, one that cannot access the WAN just HA. People have disagreements over OpenWRT and pfsense, or opensense not sure which is the “FOSS” version, but OpenWRT is not going to try and upsell you.
I am sure OpenWRT offers some ad blocking but I already had two finally tuned piholes. There are arguments between pihole and adguard home. I started with pihole I have tried adguard but went back to pihole.
Can I ask why you didn’t like adguard as much? :o
OpenWrt on Raspberry Pi 4 with UE300 dongle for the WAN side. 7 years of trouble-free operation so far.
What’s the throughput on that bad boi?
I’ve only tested up to 1Gb. It does 1Gb no probs, with SQM (QoS) which burns a lot of CPU.
I got a spiffy little fanless micro PC with five Ethernet ports, installed Ubuntu, and wrote my own iptables rules and installed pihole.
Now THAT is diy
Does it run cool enough?
Yeah, it’s barely doing anything except shifting packets and doing DNS. Load is around 0.08 on a four core processor.
OPNsense on used dell optiplex. Very easy but it can do whatever you want to grow into as you learn more.
Is the power consumption too bad, if you know?
dell optiplex
How many NICs can you cram in these? I added a second one to my Lenovo Tinys but some more are nice for a FW…
Two NIC. I’m usually using the SFF. I went 10G last year and it’s been so great. Single, used, low profile, dual port SFP+ module. One port has SFP+ to RJ45 to my modem. Other port is SFP+ passive DAC to a used Brocade ICX 2750.
This is what I did before I went to all unifi gear.
I was Unifi gear and then went back to Opnsense :P. That shit is way too expensive to replace.
The extended warranty is pretty damn good, but that’s expensive too lol
OpnSense running on an ex-lease HP i3-something SFF desktop. Added several cheap half-height GigEth PCIe cards for the LAN bridge.
It is way over spec for what OpnSense needs but it was cheap and extensible.
UPS power supply.
There’s a tangle of PoE injectors which makes me sad. PoE PCIe cards appear to be ludicrously expensive here for no apparent reason.
I’m gonna ask you the same question I’m asking everyone using office mini PCs, do you know what kind of power draw? I’m really into the idea of cheap, but I’m also getting super into green energy.
Different person. But I have proxmox on multiple mini PC (Lenovo and HP600). They max out at 65w but pull less most of the time. I suppose I should check the weekly average, but my power monitor is on the other side of the UPS and there are multiple mini PC, devices, switches, modem, wireless AP… All on the monitor. If I had to guess I’d say the router/pihole pulls <30w and the media rig with its HDDs pulls ~100 but only when it’s read/writing. The full stack idles <100 including AP/switches, way less then my gaming PC just on idle (>700 when the GPU is GPing).
(Power efficiency is nice, but the ROI for a new ARM / RISK system is probably not great now. Better to use a recycled rig pulling 40-100w now and upgrading in a few years. It’s not like you need a server rack pulling over a kilowatt, and the efficiency gain from 5-10 year old x86 vs ARM/RISK is less then swapping out an old incandescent light to an LED.
