Another successful OpenBSD setup
I’ve been buying these little boxes from AliExpress for years to use as firewalls and routers. My oldest one is almost 9 years old now! OpenBSD installs just fine. Just a BIOS tweak to always boot up after power is restored.
How would one go building a router? I was planning on getting wired networks for a NAS build but most providers seem to ship their own router which probably is a nightmare for privacy, can I just pay for internet and use whatever router I want?
OpnSense would be the easiest way if you wanted to go. It’s still not easy, but the articles online should help you out.
First you’d need a machine. I’ve got an m920q I bought off eBay for $135 after shipping.
The computer will likely only have one Ethernet port. And it’s likely the port is Realtek which isn’t supported well.
So, you’ll need to get yourself a NIC (a fancy term for a network card). There are good forum posts and articles online about the best NICs to buy for your needs. Intel is a must. However, you can find many of their NICs online labeled as another brand - usually HP, Lenovo, or Dell. Again, the forum posts will tell you what to look for.
If you bought the same computer I mentioned above, you’ll also need a riser and a bezel. Amazon and eBay will have a good selection.
Now assemble it. Flash the computer with OpnSense. Don’t plug it in as your router yet. Follow along with some basic setup guides online to figure out how you want it configured.
Once you’re happy, plug it in as your router and test that it works. If not, you’ll need to put your old router back in place until you can figure out what you need to change.
6 VLANs, 2 ISPs on load Balancing and FailOver, 6 switches, 7 APs.
The sky’s the limit
@jjlinux Hahaha no way that’s awesome
I’m bent on getting as many people as I know to self-host everything possible and to guard their home networks. The garbage out there today is too much.
> The garbage out there today is too much.
For sure. I’m hoping that with much cheaper and more reliable hardware
that we have now, it makes it easier for indivduals and small groups
to run services that could only be run by big dysfunctional companies.
Fingers crossed!
@jjlinux @selfhosted
Ive wanted one of these for a while to replace my ISPs modem+router+switch+wifi-AP. But apparently these devices can be funky to get a good wifi going, and I don’t feel like adding three (mini pc, switch, AP) new devices to my “we don’t talk about it” corner where all the IT is stored. Do you know anything about wifi on these?
It’s usually considered a poor idea to use it also as an AP.
The location usually isn’t great for your WiFi and there are better tools for the job.
Is location the only reason to not use it as the AP? If I had a larger house I’d agree, but as I live in a small apartment, the current router location can easily serve the entire flat, so that is no concern right now.
I picked up a 7 year old Netgear modem/router on eBay that has replaced my ISP modem/router. The WiFi is better, and I can port forward without taking all the cables out of the back (yeah that’s a thing with the ISP one) and forward traffic through my Adguard DNS. Well worth the £25 I bought it for.
Also if it starts annoying me I can throw OPENWRT on it and play with that instead.
I personally never understood the desire for BSD. BSD was good back in the day but we now have Linux which is better supported and protected under the GPL.
PfSense and OPNsense are both killer router “out of the box” distros built on BSD. I say this as a Linux user, with little interest in running BSD for my applications, but… Respect to BSD. ✊
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been running PFsense for about 5 years, great little toy, not 1 single issue. BSD has been paramount in my life for my firewall needs. And I only run Linux on everything else (desktops and servers), but there is not a single FOSS firewall distro out there that can match, much less surpass, a BSD based firewall.
I run OpenWRT and it works pretty well. The only potential issue is the updates but if you have a plan it isn’t a problem.
Maybe I’m missing out but from my perspective it is way cheaper to buy a off the shelf router with OpenWRT that can handle gigabit speeds than it is is to build/buy a entire computer that pulls way more power and is several times the cost.
Openwrt works great for gigabit networks with simple firewall rules and no IPS. But used 10-56gbps enterprise equipment is getting pretty cheap, and more complicated firewall configurations need more powerful hardware than the typical openwrt router.
And 56gbps on a home LAN might be overkill, but that’s not important.
I recently installed OPNsense specifically because I had to buy a mini PC with 2.5 gig ports. There simply isn’t anything reasonable on the market for the prosumer above the 1 gig threshold. Running splendidly on a Beelink EQ12.
Also, OPNsense has things OpenWRT doesn’t offer (plugins, IPS, etc.)
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 |
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| SATA | Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage |
| SSL | Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption |
| TLS | Transport Layer Security, supersedes SSL |
5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 9 acronyms.
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