Hello everyone,
My current router from 2014 is starting to give up and I am searching for a new one to replace it. I have 3 criteria that I would like for my replacement to have:
-
Be relatively new
-
Less than a $150 USD
-
Have enough power to run a network-wide VPN (my old router would max the CPU when running Wireguard and my speeds were very abysmal)
So far, I have found 3 routers that I am thinking of; Dynalink DL-WRX36, Linksys E8451, and Belkin RT3200. Truth be told, I am gravitating towards the Dynalink because it is the best overall for the price point it’s on.
I am hosting nextCloud, Lemmy, a plex_debrid serverc SearXNG, and so many more so I need hardware that is able to at least theoretically match my 1Gbps from my ISP over Wireguard with more computational power left over.
Your advice would be very appreciated.
Thank you.
Look at Gl.iNet routers
I’m no expert. Have you looked at the processors that are used and the RAM listed in the OpenWRT table? That will tell you the real details if you look it up. Then you can git clone OpenWRT, and use the gource utility to see what kind of recent dev activity has been happening in the source code.
I know, it’s a bunch of footwork. But really, you’re not buying brands and models. You’re buying one of a couple dozen processors that have had various peripherals added. The radios are just integrated PCI bus cards. A lot of options sold still come with 15+ year old processors.
The last time I looked (a few months ago) the Asus stuff seemed interesting for a router. However, for the price, maybe go this route: https://piped.video/watch?v=uAxe2pAUY50
Sounds like you’re trying to run a decent little homelab, so I would personally recommend going with prosumer hardware. Lots of N95, N100, and N5105 routers available on AliExpress, you should be able to flash OpenWRT, OPNSense, PFSense, whatever you want. I would advise getting one with an i225 or i226 NIC for best software compatibility (support for Realtek NICs can be sketchy).
I waited for a sale and got this one (N5105 version) for $95: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804915099903.html
I got the barebones version, then supplied my own Crucial RAM and a cheap hard drive for under $50. It runs PFSense without even breaking a sweat, and supports 2.5Gbps. There are cheaper options too, but I decided to stick with Topton as it’s a brand that’s well-reviewed by Youtubers that I watch.
After that, all you need is a Wifi access point. You probably can use your old router in AP mode for now, and then consider upgrading to a newer one later. I bought a Unifi U6 Pro AP and now my home network is incredibly overprovisioned for my puny little homelab, all for about $300. Lots of room to grow if I want to.
These are definitely the way to go, plenty of fanless mini pcs with at least 2 NICs aimed squarely at this use case.
And even the little n100 chip is more than most normal people need for a router, even with an encrypted VPN or deep packet inspection, so you can virtualise and run some light services alongside the router OS, like jellyfin, a caching service, or something like Grafana
I was also looking for a good up to date router that could run openwrt recently, and settled on the ASUS TUF-AX4200. Been pretty good experience so far.
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 |
| Git | Popular version control system, primarily for code |
| Unifi | Ubiquiti WiFi hardware brand |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
| k8s | Kubernetes container management package |
6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
[Thread #346 for this sub, first seen 13th Dec 2023, 05:05] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
