we want an entire definitive series about network, switches, router, access points, servers, racks, everything. Kinda like the "How to build a Network, the last guide you'll ever need!"
As far as consumer-grade junk, yeah, not much has changed. Unbox it, plug it in, type in the passphrase printed on the bottom, and you're off to the races. Networking in Enterprise has changed a LOT, and has trickled down into high-end consumer/prosumer/business. Layer 3 switches, VLANs, 2.5G/5G/10G/20G/40G LAN, SDN (software defined routers and firewalls), etc, etc.
As a tech director for a school district, I had the lucky privilege of our big name firewall/router dying on a Friday afternoon. There was no way I was getting a replacement before Monday morning when staff and students arrived. pfSense saved the day with old on hand hardware, and haven’t gone back since. I easily built a cold spare for “just-in-case” purposes.
I did this years ago before the age of cheap home routers. Loaded RH Linux and used the Router HowTo to set up the SW. It worked great for years but, honestly, better options came along and were actually cheaper. You can do tons of stuff with a PC based router, but most of us don't really need that.
I did the same thing circa 2001 using a Wondows Box and Internet Connection Sharing. However, these days a good all-in-one Router is just simpler and far more power efficient for most users.
This is the same thing I found. Tp link and ubiquiti both have great routers that are as good and more efficient for less money than anything I could put together
@@ericbsmith42TL;DR buy a Microtik hex lite for $40, get a switch if necessary, and get a used ubiquiti access point (or some other WAP) and you might be better off for about the same price as a "good" combo router. I would agree if I haven't had hardware problems on nearly every single one I've had, even the ones I've gotten back from RMA. It honestly made me give up and put Pfsense on my home server and install an Intel i210 on it. My main problems were that something would fail or be unreliable (wifi sometimes, Ethernet switch other times. This is on about 5 routers that I purchased myself in the last 6 years) and their support for getting a replacement would be completely useless. Had to wait over 2 months for a replacement on one, and 3 weeks was the fastest. I went and bought a used backup router (which had an unreliable Ethernet switch) for $20 and used that while I waited for Netgear or Linksys to get me a replacement. I'm not a normal user, a normal user would be without internet for weeks because of the poor service and it is NOT okay. Honestly I think a better solution than this video is to buy a cheap mikrotik router rather than what I did, but I did mine to learn things too. RouterOS is a little daunting, but not as bad as Pfsense.
With mine, I have my main LAN, VLAN for guest WiFi, test LAN and a connection to a Cisco router. I have both IPv4 and IPv6, NTP server connected to stratum 1 servers and more.
really appreciate including the idle wattage and providing power efficient alternatives. Hoping to see power efficiency become a more common talking point in future videos
There’s devices named "Soft Routers" actually optimised to be a router. Its power consumption is lower, usually look like a Mini PC and you can install any os like RouterOS/OpenWRT/OpenSense etc
@@not-AIA lot of people do care. Reducing your power consumption is better for the environment and it saves money. I’m not from the US but from what I’ve heard the price of electricity is much lower there compared to European countries. Having a device that is more energy efficient can save you quite a bit of money
@@hannahl8164 how much are we talking tho? 30 bucks a yr? maybe so 2 bucks a month and that's on the very high side. and how is it better for the environment? by that logic I guarantee you an electric range uses waaaay more electricity.
An important note on 10gb nics: The x540-t2 NIC recommended here doesn't support 2.5gb or 5gb links. It appears most ISPs offering faster than gigabit are using 5gb links from their router/modem so you need a NIC that supports that. The recommendation for a while has been x550-t2 based cards but those have almost doubled in price in the last year.
Great catch! Any 10GBaseT NIC manufactured before NBaseT became a thing won't support 2.5gb or 5gb, as 10GBaseT (802.3an) and NBaseT (802.3bz) are two different 802.x standards. Considering that the x540-t2 NIC was manufactured in 2012, that's definitely an 802.3an NIC. From my understanding, and I could be wrong: - 802.3an can always negotiate 100Mbps, 1Gbps, and 10Gbps. Sometimes it can do 10Mbps depending on the manufacturer/chipset/drivers/etc. 802.3an CANNOT do 2.5Gbps or 5Gbps. - 802.3bz can always negotiate 100Mbps and 1Gbps. I don't know if it can do 10Mbps--never tried. From there, it's a matter of whether or not the port is capable of 2.5Gbps, 5Gbps, or 10Gbps, and the higher speed ports can support the "next increment" down. So a 10Gbps bz port can support 5Gbps and 2.5Gbps. Likewise, a 5Gbps port can support 2.5Gbps (but NOT 10Gbps). Connecting a 'bz' device to an 'an' port (or vice versa) can have various results: - 10Gbps 'bz' to 10Gbps 'an': Negotiates 10Gbps. - 10Gbps 'bz' to 5Gbps 'bz': Negotiates 5Gbps. - 10Gbps 'bz' to 2.5Gbps 'bz': Negotiates 2.5Gbps. - 10Gbps 'bz' to any speed port lower than the above: Negotiates the lower speed (although 10Mbps may not even work). - 10Gbps 'an' to any 'bz' port (5Gbps or 2.5Gbps): Negotiates 1Gbps (that's the highest common speed both ends have in common). - 10Gbps 'an' to any lower speed port: Negotiates the lower speed (although 10Mbps may not even work). For sake of completion: - 5Gbps 'bz' to 5Gbps 'bz': Negotiates 5Gbps - 5Gbps 'bz' to 2.5Gbps 'bz': Negotiates 2.5Gbps - 5Gbps 'bz' to any lower speed port: Negotiates the lower speed (but I'm having doubts about 10Mbps even working at all) - 2.5Gbps 'bz' to 2.5Gbps 'bz': Negotiates 2.5Gbps - 2.5Gbps 'bz' to any lower speed port: Negotiates the lower speed (but I'm having doubts about 10Mbps even working at all)
My x550-t2 works great, but it's speed is listed as "unknown" within pfsense. Otherwise it works great, even at 2.5gbe. Also note, you can get the fiber versions of these cards and use a transceiver to convert the fiber connection into 10gbe Ethernet.
also, imho, once you're at more than a couple 10GbE links you really should be running dedicated enterprise/enthusiast style gear and layouts. a "core switch" with proper hardware-acceleration is like magic; at L2 even a cheaper switch can have eye-watering backplane speeds with VLANs and more and ASICs can use shockingly minimal power. I'd wait for at least a few more major-generational-improvements before it makes sense to process it in software. having said that, software is a great place for a couple more complex VLAN or Firewall tricks even at L2... just make sure you have the performance and check power consumption
I would love to see one of these concepts built out of a rack-mount server. You can get fairly cheap 1U multiport switches that run at guaranteed gigabit speeds, and racks make everything tidier.
Why tho? Sounds like a recipe for way higher electricity bills and a bunch of extra noise. I put win XP on an old G4 (w/ an array cause idiocy) tryna be cool and wanted to kill myself. It was like there was a frikkin Harrier jump jet landing constantly, even after I pulled the array.
@@YerBrwnDogAteMyRabit I got my gaming rig in a 2U. Because 1U was an issue with most motherboards being 1.3U. It is not that loud if you know what you are doing. In fact when not under high load it is very quiet. A Soekris 65 or PcEngines apu would fit the bill, and 1U.
@@jamegumb7298 Well (please forgive the late reply) that XP situation was def an experiment fo sho, but I'm sure if you used non- DC type hardware, you could put something a lot more energy efficient and quiet together. I'd imagine aesthetics-wise you could make it look good too.
@@YerBrwnDogAteMyRabit Any DC hardware would fit in 1U, I used 2U because it is a standard B650 mobo (those damn shields make it 1.3U, a barebones mobo might just fit but they are bottom bitch tier like A520 or A620 and lacked some stuff I wanted) with 5600X (Maybe 7600/7700 soon if I can be bothered to take it apart). I suspect most would call it quiet, you just hear the exhaust start to blow under max load and it annoys me but the case is just tight. I do have surround sound with 8 inch woofers backed by compression drivers so this usually is not an issue. This is why I want to design my own 1.5U, put a large radiator in 2×120 or 2×140 (tilted, windtunnel, convection or ultra slim fans), better layout, I already designed the dual pump-res combo. I would have ordered it already but Protocase is not exactly cheap, 1st time has to be right. I got a Xeon 4114 in a 1U case (runs BSD). That runs even quiter because I used a rather deep 44mm radiator (not easy yto get tho).
Also, if you used a reasonably modern, non-mini PC for the router, and you have the know-how, you can virtualize the rig and make it do more than just the router. One of the VMs would be the router, and you can have other tasks like NAS, game server, even your blog hosted on the single box.
Advanced mode: Install pfsense on an intel nuc, then use vlans to separate wan and lan. its a LOT easier to have one interface for wan and one interface for lan, but its totally possible to build a router with a single nic.
Please, if you make a video like this in the future... show viewers how they can setup separated networks (VLAN) for their network. For example having all IoT or "smart" devices on their own separated network? One of the basic security precautions one would take by setting up a router this way!
Setting up vlans in PFsense or opnsense is simple but it's configuring the switch and tagging/untagging the ports that is going to get most users. Not all switches are the same.
@@raknikmik it all depends on how much you want to do and your threat model. But yes, if you're separating IoT devices, homekit should be as well. 1) so it can talk to LAN IoT devices easier 2) it talks to IoT devices A LOT 3) it's still an IoT device
This is a cool suggestion. As an owner of about 10 "smart" appliances, what kinds of vulnerabilities can be prevented by putting them on a separate network?
Mikrotik has some decent 10gbe options too. Also, remember there are the low power / S / T (like the 4770 is an 84w TDP, the 4770S is 65w, and the 4770T is 45w TDP) type intel chips for some of these machines that have a lower base clock with the same boost, they will save some extra power when idle.
The switches from that brand are crap, though. We have one in the office, and the connections are always being interrupted. And, despite being a 10 Gb switch, speeds from computer to computer are significantly lower.
I have a feeling you have no knowledge of routerOS, didn’t switch to switchOS (not necessary), and didn’t troubleshoot on the forum. I had the same problems as you did. But I knew that wasn’t an acceptable scenario from such a highly regarded company and I knew I didn’t know my way around routerOS. So I did some research. Yeh turns out you need to mess with some of the settings. If you are going to leave the switch running on routerOS then you need to turn off auto negotiate and manually set your speeds. Is it as easy to setup as an arista layer 2 set to DHCP? No way but those where $5000-10,000 switches when they first came out. If that’s what you want you can get them cheap I sold my 16 port SFP+ unit for just under $1000 and went out and bought a 4 ports SFP+ plus 1 1G switch for $150 from MikroTik and I’m very happy with it. You just need to read and troubleshoot.
If you ever stick a wired ethernet transceiver in you need to go into settings and turn off auto negotiate especially if it isn’t the MikroTik branded transceiver. In fact if it isn’t the MikroTik transceiver your lucky if it works at all if you left auto-negotiate set to on.
MikroTik switches and routers are basically experimental-only, they're not that strong for daily usage and have a lower security level. You can always upgrade it through software etc but yeah
I switched off dedicated routers and built a pfsense box with a separate AP a long time ago and never looked back. Not only is it feature rich, but there's a huge benefit to being able to reset the wireless AP without killing the internet entirely. You also can do fun stuff like use VLANs and easily separate out your wireless traffic or guest network.
did you have to do any extra configuration for your WAN cable to connect into PFsense and just start working, or did you have to get additional settings info from your ISP and coordinate?
Honestly the price of an Edgerouter and ease of use IMO makes it better than building a PFsense box but that's just my opinion. Though I did not do to much advanced stuff my fav part was how magical the Smart Queue setting was, I could download a steam game without lagging anybody else on the network at nearly full speeds.
@@0hleg a million times better. dedicated APs are great at being APs and you can expand your network mesh-style without needing to mess with your router.
I still think it's not for most people unless they know what they are doing (considering half of my friends don't even know what is WAN and LAN) but I love this kind of tutorial video and have been using pfsense on a mini server for the last 5 6 years super stable and with way more features than the ISP router (VPN, DDNS, traffic monitoring, comprehensive firewall rule, and more).
If you don't know WAN v LAN you're not even watching this, or: A: Checked out within anywhere from 15sec (or 0.25min) into the video or atmost 420s (7min) just staring at the screen B: You thought doing it cheap versus a $400 mid-to-top tier consumer router was too much and there had to be a way to DIY, five minutes in already checking out on the $350 router and paying $50 for install to match that $400 including the cost value of doing nothing C: Ask their friend/friend-zone friend/family member/tech friendly colleague to do it after a variable amount of probing and driving towards asking for help while doing your best to avoid directly asking for help
I think I'm a great example of the target, I was a young soon-to-be computer scientist, and videos like these expedite the process of finding all these cool ways to set up the tech around me, and give me a good foundation of information for learning further things. That being said, I think LTT's target has never been the absolute laymen, but it's great when everyone has even a passive interest in this kind of stuff :)
For most non enthusiasts the ISP supplied box "just works" and makes their support easier to manage. I personally have always used my own setups but it does mean if things go wrong it's down to me to fix!😅
You can also just buy a better one and use it instead of the provided one. Then you have more performance, more reliability and less power consumption than the DIY.
@@Pseudynom that's what most people do who don't want to use the ISP supplied one. However it's still down to you to fix if it goes wrong as many ISPs at least here, won't support you unless you use their kit.
Really appreciate you putting the idle wattage in at the end. Fancy doing a "DIY NAS vs dedicated" video looking at power consumption vs outlay/expandability too? Bonus points for talking about whether shutting a NAS down overnight to save power is going to result in b0rked harddrives
Power consumption is pretty big. I tend to keep my devices 5+ years. I ended up going with ASUS RT-AX/AC gaming routers with fast processors (researched on Wikipedia), TP-Link WiFi 5 APs for like $60 a piece, and some off the shelf TP-Link smart switches for $30-40. I modded the router's firmware, unlocked a ton of capabilities, had fun tuning it for weeks (I have 1ms jitter under load. Tuned Merlin FlexQOS is nuts.), and got a super reliable setup that is very power efficient and covers a huge home - for like $340 in cash outlay. It's more power efficient than an old PC router, and some of those costs would've been incurred anyway. I should come out well ahead in under 5 years. Internet equipment runs 24/7, so 5 or 10 watts adds up, and 35 watts certainly adds up fast! 0.8kwh/day in savings. My NAS is Synology and is more efficient than having a PC running all the time, plus the web apps are pretty skookum.
@@BikeHelmetMk2 yeah, my media server is pulling 145W at idle, so 1kWh a night while doing basically nothing, but I'm concerned that spinning up and down the drives would drastically shorten their lifespan. It's really difficult to weigh up a couple of £ a month vs potentially £200 for an early drive failure
@@JamesScholesUK That is a tough one. I guess it depends on things like warranty duration... whether you'd chance it. For a bunch of 18TB drives, you would care less about the power consumption than the wear and tear. My NAS consumes around 18 watts. Much more acceptable. I got it on a Prime day sale, so very reasonable price.
A FIY NAS will be so much of a better bang for your buck that power usage isn't a factor, especially since the majority of the power will be consumed by the hard drives.
I would LOVE another separate video on this topic; maybe something like the live builds Linus does on occasion so we can follow/build along. I'm done and over with the internet issues we keep having and I myself would love something like that to help in the short term while I am learning/improving similar ideas for the future
What are your exact pain points with your current setup? Personally, I feel like a decent router/ap unit will work for 99% of home users. Personally I use the Asus RT-AX82U (about $230) and that is enough to cover my entire 1600sq ft home plus back yard and front yard. I do have the device roughly in the center of my house. The Asus routers have an easy to use management UI and are extremely easy to set up. They are also loaded with semi advanced features as well that are pretty easy to use and configure (QOS, port forwarding, DDNS, Mac filter, wifi mesh, VPN client, parental features, etc.). There is also an app for mobile that makes management even simpler. I had a dyi router at one point using a Dell optiplex 7060 w/ i7-8700T 32GB ram + Netgear 802.11ac access point...which the dell was over kill I know. I had 4 of them as part of my home lab and pulled one to build a "better router". I honestly didn't get any noticable gain over the an older Asus ac router I had. When it came time to upgrade to 802.11ax I just bout the Asus I mentioned and the Dell rejoined my lab.
I'd like to see a video like this expanded to have a roundup comparison between a DIY router and a similarly priced router. Include comparisons of power usage over time and under load, does the purpose built have performance issues over time as it heats up, does it throttle, etc. etc.
Are you kidding you know how quick 90% of companies who make routers would flag and black list this video to keep people from finding out how much they could Not give to the already made routers that are super cool sounding at the low cost of $399! Its a Gaming Router!!! That's also part of our sale point we have to add stickers too! Yes stickers and "For Gaming" everywhere!
@@Freakinkat I can't tell if your a troll or not. If that was truly the case with companies being able to flag videos they didn't like, RUclips wouldn't have any videos that are critical of items, or suggestions on DIY ways to not funnel money their way. Sure, in some conspiracy theory kind of way the videos could have issues, but its doubtful. Once you ioen that box on the internet it doesnt go away, NVidia and Hardware Unboxed. My comment would be something that falls under WHY LTT Labs was started, to offer full, in-depth, unbiased reviews
@@zach3893 😮💨just trolling, brother, plus rambling. That would be stupid rando and on a semi funny note just imagine a company literally like trying to stop someone from making a diy comparison video hating it and attempting to flag it as idk slander or copy rights claim just to curve viewers from seeing it like its some super omega secret that must never be seen or spoken 🤣, I don't know that would be nanners. Plus my comments like going one way then shifts to like some left Field rant.... It entertains me from time to time, it was like 3am I was pretty bored and tired, lemme make it l, pleeesseeeee? Or do you have any thoughts 🐱 ?
I'll be praying for y'all when I set my cheap gas furnace to a cozy 71F this winter. Actually our gas prices up a lot too this year, even if it isn't nearly as bad as for y'all. So I'll be praying for you in my crisp 67F home. R
@@rightwingsafetysquad9872 I like living in an apartment surrounded by other apartments with poor insulation. I get no natural light but I only turn my heat on every few months to clear out the dust to avoid fire.
@Default Koala 👍 Yep, my neighbours are heating my appartment for me. Ever since my landlord renovated the building with top of the line insulation on the outside and leaving everythin inside the building as is (pretty common in Germany) I'm practically not turning on the heat at all. @joebot86 😂😂😂
As a German, you are good to go too if your ISP is nice enough to offer you a Fritzbox. Otherwise I'd probably have built a router like that myself already :o
I remember building my first router firewall in the late 90s with a pair of 3c509bc and a compaq deskpro with a 150mhz pentium Pro. Great to see this video, the configuration has got much more straightforward
for those planning to go with this, just stick with the 4th gen or later sff pc and get the power consumption under 10-15watts (10watts while idling and under 15 watts during 1gbit NAT traffic) though this is just for the sff pc alone, adding a switch and 3 mesh wifi kit usually gets this power consumption around upto 25watts overall.
@@mudit1I wonder, would a laptop work with PF sense. because I’m thinking, I have a laptop with a i5-1035g1, 8GB of ram and a 256 GB ssd. Laptops are also power efficient as well, so I’m just wondering what you think
This is a great idea one thing to note is alot of older machines are lower power usage but you are still using alot more power for a desktop than a router.
@@TheNpcNoob I was gonna say, a router/NAS combo alone feels like this would make the power cost worth it. Adding additional things such as a printer location really does seal the deal though.
@@RineyCat exactly and say you had a server running 24/7 for projects and/or labs then the above running in their own dockers only adds to the value prospect.
@@TheNpcNoob Agreed but that's assuming you already using those things. Most users typically will have a 10watt router from their ISP. So for the average user let's say typicall older desktop maybe will draw 200w with the ap aswell that's a substantial increase during some of the peak power pricing. I'm from the UK and alot of lower income family's are worried about heating their homes. So for anyone seeing the video the jump to high power consumption is worth the note. Probably would be a great video for LTT how to get the most with the least power budget.
Problem with using an old computer as a router is that it is directly connected to the internet and exposing the Intel management engine to the web. This can allow remote takeover of the router and your LAN. Only way to prevent that is to figure out how to flash coreboot onto the old computer.
Sure, technically someone could "takeover" your router and LAN. But for your average home user, I'd be willing to bet you're more likely to win the lottery than to have that happen.
@@mintymus Modern tools allow the whole IPV4 space to be scanned in minutes by any malicious actor. When someone finds a vulnerability or a weakness, they will scan the whole internet looking for targets. This is done programmatically, not manually. You don’t need to be special to be a victim of a script.
@@mintymus First off, I wouldn’t base my network security around anecdotal evidence. Secondly, if I did, I would have to ask everyone that has had a security compromise to allow me to do a postmortem investigation to determine the initial access vector. To answer your question, yes, I have dealt with machines that had been accessed in unauthorized fashion via the Intel AMT technology. Was it some kid trying to run PFSense on his Dad’s old computer, no. Still, security through obscurity is not security. Do things the right way the first time.
@@cuppacheese So do you never use your smart phone when you're not at home? In that long winded response, you still didn't say if it was someone you knew.
This is actually what got me intrested in Networking as a hobby. I have been running pfSense for years now, recently during work from home I got another Internet connection from another ISP and have been running 2 WANs in Failover. Edit: I was introduced to pfSense (and Unraid) by LTT!
Love that you took electricity prices into account! Prices are insane here in Europe. The energy consumption of my ISP router-combo-thing was for me a reason to replace it by something better and more energy efficient.
You could run your router and Jellyfin + TrueNAS + etc server of that machine at the same time if you use virtualisation. I've done it in an old HP with the same specs as that Dell. In your virtualisation software, assign one of the NICs to a virtual LAN interface, and connect all the VMs to it. Assign the other one to a virtual WAN interface, and connect only the OpnSense VM to it. Set up OpnSense as a VM in the same way as described in this video, set up Jellyfin and TrueNAS as described in other videos.
Rocking opnsense for years now and glad you guys used it as well. I am also routing all my traffic through a VPN, blocked IoT devices from phoning home and rerouting all DNS requests to a pihole. Maybe do a follow up on this because there are great ways to DIY your home with stuff like that.
That would be an amazing video, I do something similar with PfSense but don't have any IoT devices. My smart tv is an old laptop running linux with a bluetooth keyboard & mouse, also an xbox controller for retro game emulators. Out of curiosity what VPN provider are you using? I am with IVPN just cause they seem the most privacy respecting but Mullvad seems pretty good too.
Keep in mind that APs from manufacturers like Ubiquiti will either need a switch with PoE, a PoE injector or a power supply. I run several APs from Sophos at home power them via PoE directly from the switch. This part gets glossed over by Jake, which might lead to people not being able to power up their AP.
@@laurenzooo Yep, those from TP Link will set you back about 15 bucks or so. Typically they max out at about 15 watts, which is enough for APs, cameras, phones and so on. My switch can do up to 30 watts per device.
I'd rather buy a good purpose built switch/router/AP than turn an old PC into a power hogging router without the other necessary functions, particularly the AP which will cost extra for another add-in card. Not every router is a cheap ISP provided router. Even if you got the PC and NIC free, the much higher power consumption is going to end up in a higher total cost of ownership.
True but there are quite power efficient mini pcs on the market so it can sometimes make sense. Especially if the place where you want to put the router is not where you need the best Wi-Fi reception.
You can run this on a small SBC that sips power (sub 10W) so I don't know what you're talking about. Also, that Ubiquiti access point is probably 10x better than any "purpose built" all-in-one router/AP combo you can get off the shelf (even for 2-3x the price of that AP).
2 года назад+2
@@murtadha96 Yeah, for 100 bucks you get n on 2.4GHz in 2022. It's super awesome.
Very cool to get this LTT scrapyard build after Wendell's Diy router video. I like the ecosystem of off the shelf products that help fill out the build. The MicroPC mentioned at the end is quite intriguing. I feel allot of people upgrading to the 5800x3d are going to have spare processors to use in projects like this. The debate of whether to use a spare processor for a dedicated stream-capture device, router, server, NAS, etc. could benefit from it's own guide, I imagine LTT could make a decision-tree about the optimal use cases of different generations and tiers of cpus. I love that the Optiplex has a 5.25" drive bay. Next time around you guys should Ball-out with a blinging 5.25" fan-controller/temperature-monitor from last decade.
A powerhungry desktop plattform for router is kind of overkill. If you are building a server thats going to be on 24/7 anyway install some router OS in a VM and use a dedicated switch so you can utilize that hardware instead of 24/7 running a desktop at 5% load.
Love this, always wondered how to do it. Only issue I have is, x86 is far less power efficient than the routers we get provided by ISP's. With energy costs sky rocketing (particularly here in the UK), every little bit of extra efficiency is critical at the minute.
A mini pc should be good enough for your requirements. There are a lot out there which consume way less power (from 5watts to around 25 watts). Openwrt is not a full fledged firewall and the AP hardware may not be good enough to run all firewall features (I have both openwrt and Opnsense).
I’ve just bought a used Synology router for £35 since I want DDNS functionality for watching tv abroad without paying for a VPN. I suppose ultimately it depends on what your use case is, this for me is fine. However if you want better Wi-Fi I know that virgin is giving out new Wi-Fi 6 routers for free to customers that have the gen 3 hub or older.
Repurposing a tower as a router is nice if you have cheap energy, but here in the UK thin clients are your friend. Google Parkytowers, this one person has put a lot of effort into documenting most of the thin clients you can find used for cheap, including their idle and running power draw. I'm currently running an IGEL M340C with OpenWRT as my home router, which I got off eBay for £20. It has an AMD Jaguar quad core, draws 7-12 watts while in use, and works perfectly with a Realtek gigabit ethernet USB adapter for the WAN connection. I also run a 10ZIG 58xxQ as an adblocker/VPN gateway. With the powersave governor enabled in Linux, it only draws 4-5 watts from the wall while fully saturating my ISP's download speed.
My ISP has a 2GB fiber option, so I bought a n100-based mini PC with multiple i226 2.5gb NICs off Aliexpress. I installed OPNsense and it's been rock solid and very fast. It's just far more complex than an off-the-shelf router, and I've needed tutorials to even wade into something like port forwarding, which was far easier on consumer devices.
Here in Germany we actually got FritzBoxen. These are manufactured by a German company named AVM. These things often outperform even the Asus or Ubiquiti Router combos. Most ISPs bundle these with their services, so at least that is one good thing about Germany's internet PS: These seem not very common other than the countries directly around Germany :c
Only once I had a router by another company than avn and I was shocked that I couldnt even activate wifi (it was blocked by the provider, you had to extra pay for it). Best thing about those fritz boxes is, that even the most basic ones can be manually configured as you want them to be. Yeah one good thing about Germany.
yea, the routers are "fine", but provide shitty wifi and the real issue is that our actual internet speed and quality is kinda awful in most rural areas.
I’m incredibly surprised they didn’t mention the alternative to making this unit. This is a power hungry, unreliable solution to something that can be had for $60-90 getting a standalone router. The ubiquiti edge router x and tp link Omada router are 4 port routers without an all in one setup so you can buy separate high end access points
i wouldnt say unreliable I bypassed my bell canada fibre modem. With a dual 10 gbit network card with sfp modules over 2 years ago. I use it for my 1.5 GBIT bell fibre connection. i bought the optiplex for 40$ I added the smallest cheapest ssd i could find. I have yet to get an outage that was fault of the equipment or pfsense
I would not describe this solution as unreliable, power-hungry. That largely depends on the hardware you choose to run it on. I have had pfsense or similar running for almost 10 years now and have had very few issues that I did not inflict upon myself LOL. These platforms offer even more officially supported flexibility than edge router x for sure. I can not speak to Omada but as it's more or less a clone of Unifi, my bet is pretty good it is also limited in flexibility. now could most home users be served just fine by one of these devices of course. quick side note, while I am aware solutions like this support more, features if you are willing to go poking around in the Json configs it's not officially supported and could break with a system update or clicking the wrong thing in the web interface so I don't count them. No hate just adding my thoughts to the matter, I won't be giving up my pfsense box anytime soon tho. Hope you have a wonderful day.
If you have more than two ports, you can make the admin port one of those so you can make it harder to crack. The admin interface is only available via that port.
Would have been really nice to see how to set up specific features - such as a dedicated AP for IOT devices, or other features that are seldom used but really need to be for security
Nice video. One thing. The speed test. Often it is more useful to measure PPS (packets per second). High PPS, that's what the gamer needs. Although speed test is also important.
If you're not going to route in software, and aren't setting up packet queues, than you should probably just stick to openwrt flashed over cheaper hardware. You'll get the same configuratbility, and the same network performance. Using a full pc should be done when you want to improve network prioritization, filtering, and detection using kernel processed packets
8:25 The "this guy" switch is an Edimax 8 port model. I like them because they are a) cheap (but they are all quite cheap these days, so yeah) and b) (this is the big one for me) THEY HAVE THEIR LITTLE POWER PLUG ON THE SIDE OF THE RJ45 PORTS. This makes it so much easier to cable manage by not having a cable stick out on BOTH long edges. Also, it runs on 5V and draws a maximum of 3 watts, so you can probably run it off a USB 3.0 port.
I’ve always wanted to do this just to do it. There have been so many times I’ll randomly come across a board with insane amounts of ethernet connectivity built in, and that or a switch is the first thing that comes to mind. There’s just something about knowing you have the fastest router possible.
Totally a great idea to potentially reduce e-waste and have been doing similar things with thin clients and half length Lan cards for years … OS up to you to choose but both Pfsense and opnsense are great you can also opt to use MikroTik router OS for x86 to make it simple and have a shitload of features and potentially do the DYI ISP if you want :) other available options are also openwrt that also runs on x86 a damn lot faster
Another good budget option for a NIC on OpnSense is the HP NC364T. It's a quad port gigabit card, so you can even set up additional interfaces for guest networks or for failover if you have a cellular network backup. You can frequently find them on eBay for pretty cheap, I think I got mine for $25ish USD.
+1 for the NC364T. I tried 2 other 4-port Intel GbE NICs (one Dell and one other ancient Intel 4 port card, probably Dell too) and had all sorts of issues including the motherboard not POSTing. Threw the HP NC364T in and all sorted 🙌
I’d definitely be interested in learning about VLANs with this system, as well as VPNs and installing pi-hole, to have a single box handle all of the networking for a house.
@@lostintechnology1851 it is if you care about network design, but yea, your average joe, the 99.9% of people dont need that, and that includes most people who watch these videos too. lol Also@OP if you're interested, jsut google what vlans are, literally if you're interested you'd look it up vs posting and waiting for Linus Corp to make a video about it. Off the bat, not what it takes.
Yeah VLAN at least the IoT devices including cellphones to their own VLAN as those use casting and what not to other IoT devices. IoT is a massive issue with security updates and not worth taking the chance if you local fileshare and have PC's that are on all the time. So no VLANs aren't a big deal if you have just a few devices like a phone and a Firestick, but if you have a robot vacuum and smart outlets or wifi lightbulbs... Yeah VLAN that.
Coming back to this video and one important point they missed here about APs is that when purchasing one, regardless of new or secondhand, that you should figure out if it needs a separate controller to set up and manage the AP. Ubiquiti and Cisco APs usually need some sort of device running controller software, at least temporarily.
If your internet is not more than 1G you could also get an ubiquity edge router which is very configurable and relatively cheap depending on the model you get.
*Really* pleased to see you opted for OPNsense. I've ran it now for 6 years, and absolutely love it. Also FWIW their IRC channel is great for quick help. I've upgraded and upgraded and upgraded, without issue.
For the price of the components (not to mention power consumption) you can have new allin1 wifi router that is way better than what your ISP has provided and is much simpler to manage. For home users this is like a hammer to kill a mosquito.
Eaxctly what i was thinking. 24/7 power usage adds up. I also bet the ping delay is less then going though purpose built hardware made to do the job then a universal computer
I would definitely use a Protectli vault if you are going down this route. Unless you need fibre networking, then you would be talking spf cards in a poweredge server. Also, as for opensense vs pfsense, opensense uses hardenedBSD, which is a bit better in terms of security. As for serial, it is generally used for embedded devices or devices with no video output for anyone wondering. (An example would be cisco routers)
You should make a video about Ventoy, this is a bootloader for USB sticks, where you can just put your ISOs on the drive and can select them during booting from the stick. I use mine to install servers, Windows pcs as well as fiddling around in live Linux distributions like Kali or gParted. Would be an awesome topic for a video that hasn’t really been covered (as I know)
Another great option might be an old laptop. They usually have much better power efficiency, built in screen and keyboard for debugging, and a free PCI-e x1 slot if you remove the Wifi card, or a PCI-e 4x slot if you remove the m.2 drive, giving you enough IO to potentially put network cards in, or maybe even a sata controller or raid card for a NAS. If it's a somewhat recent machine you can even run plex and do live transcoding with Intel QuickSync or AMD AMF encoders. Also, free UPS for the router and all connected devices if your laptop's battery is still good. You could probably even DIY a way to power the ISP modem from your laptop's USB ports, which would keep it running during a power outage.
Do you have a laptop setup like this for yourself? Sounds interesting but i'd be a bit concerned if my main router is a disassembled laptop with 2 m.2 to pcie NIC adapters swinging around.
@@Sabrinahuskydog brah, i used to run mmorpgs 24/7 on laptops. Never once had one die from 2007-2018 when I then switched to a desktop I built. Only time I'd turn them off is when I knew it was time to clean them out and apply new thermal paste. As long as your vents aren't blocked, laptops will never overheat running as a router. You saw that it was using not even 10% of a desktop CPU in the video, that laptop will be running at room temp pretty much for the life of it.
@@alexdi1367 You could set the fans to only kick in when temps are high and have it passively cooled when idle to save the fan from wearing out. They are usually easy to replace anyway.
Great intro video for this concept. Increasing network knowledge is better for everyone and helps prevent all sorts of shenanigans that ISPs pull because they assume people don't understand and will use the defaults.
When raspberry pi's were available you could also turn one into a router as well. Now I wish you guys would take on a really complex setup like running Proxmox on desktop hardware, similar to the optiplex, and run a router in a container with load-balancing and revers proxies. On top of other cool homelab stuff, eg trunas or plex
I have proxmox on a ryzen 5900X, but the MB is a workstation/server board to support ECC RAM. Desktop servers are fun but extremely finicky due to parts.
As of Nov 11 in USA, TP-Link TL-SX3008F is ~$260 for a 10G all-fiber managed switch. If your DIY router have optical 10Gbps ports (that is, if you are using cheap second-hand server network cards, for example the Mellanox CX311A,) consider this over the 10G copper options. Fiber also permits longer runs.
Good vídeo, OPNSense is great. Also, you can buy a Mikrotik router. Double than Cisco professional capabilities, one hundreth the price, 10 gigabit ports configurable as router or switch, 15 watts, outstanding community support.
The thing is: Microtik has tons of options, more than you will ever need in fact - but is geared towards professionals. It is absolutely not user friendly.
I'm loving this videos. They'll be really useful when people starts upgrading the motherboards on their Framework Laptops or something similar. I have a Framework and I always wondered what would I use the motherboard for if I upgrade it in a few years. So thanks for the ideas
Unless you want to run a hypervisor and virtualize the firewall, SSD and an i7 is overkill for home users. On a side note, thin clients with pcie ports can take care of being power efficient.
@LMojzis You'll save like ~8watts. Depending on how much electricity costs in your area, the purchase price of a $15 SSD could break even in less than 6 months. For me, averaging on-peak and off-peak power costs for running it 24 hours a day, it would take me a little over 2 years go break even. Most people are going to get more than 2 years of use out of a PfSense/OPNsense box like this, and even if they end up changing to a new box, the drive is still useable for other purposes, so it's still probably worth it in the long run if you don't mind paying the energy costs upfront. There's also the probability that the cost of electricity will increase over time, so you may end up seeing a faster ROI on the purchase of an SSD. And not that it's really that big of a concern, because you likely won't be rebooting the firewall that often, but significantly faster boot times are also a nice bonus of solid state storage.
In Germany we have AVM and their Fritzboxes and their amazing devices. Not upgradeable but very strong when it comes to compatibilty, perfomance and features. They often cost some euros extra to your contract but they are definitly worth it.
some are a little bit upgradeable ^^ as avm doesnt differentiate the hardware between some models but releases them with different firmware, you can sometimes "hack" a different firmware onto it to unlock 100mbit to 1gbit on more ports or usb3 instead of usb2 I did that with my fritzbox 7520 and flashed a 7530 firmware onto it to get all its benefits. I see that as an upgrade of sorts (but not intended yes)
After getting really frustrated about ISP router and its wifi I purchased from ebay a old juniper srx firewall with 16x1Gbit ports and a decent refurbished wifi router. It costed me total 100 bucks with the shipping. Set the wifi to AP and all is really nice. Only issue was that at that pricepoint the firewall doesnt have PoE so I need to use separate swich for the cameras. Oh yeah and the another issue I had was that the firewall needed a console cable.
11:18 😂 omfg, YOU KILLED ME with that family photo. Like I can legit die happy right now because of how hard that hit my funny bone. Laughter aside, KUDOS! This was an amazing project. Even though I’m deep in the UniFi ecosystem, I thoroughly enjoyed this and would still love to try this build someday.
One important piece left out of this video is that the ISP "router" is also a modem. so you cant just chuck it out. you need it to do the modem stuff. you can put it in bridge mode and connect it to your pfsense.
I've been running a similar combo for a few years. One thing to note is if you need to replace the case fan, you will need to find one with matching RPM specs. I replaced the case fan with an 80mm noctua and the bios had a hissy fit as the ran RPM was a lot lower. (You can't permanently bypass the warning). Optiplex 9020 with an Intel 4570, 8gb ram and 256gb SSD with an Intel quad gigabit NIC. You definitely need to take power into account though, the 4th gen Intel CPUs were a fair bit more power efficient then 3rd gen. However even I'm considering replacing this with something more efficient. My setup uses around 30-40w and costs around $90-100 AUD per annum. Opnsense is cool and super powerful for nerds who want to run a homelab, but its overkill for the average user.
Don't forget you can get a "t" class lower power processor for $8-$12. Such as i5 3470t or i3 3240t, also available in Pentium and from 2nd-12th gen (4th gen and up highly recommended). But you can also disable hyperthreading and turbo in BIOS to get less power usage as well. And shut off anything you aren't using in the BIOS to save some more power. Run it off an Intel Optane 16gb NVMe drive in a PCIe adapter if you can. Use the USB for Clover bootloader if needed.
This was very interesting for me because I have very little knowledge on the subject. How ever a comparison vs an off the shelf ISP supplied modem would of been interesting to see the cost/benefit of building your own.
Now how do you set up your devices to work on this router? Left the most important part out for the layman who understands what you did somewhat but doesn’t know why or how to use it past the optiplex unit. Setting up devices to use this is important to understand for the security minded. We need a part 2
So you're replacing a 24h/7days a week 5Watt device with a 100+Watt device at a time when electricity prices are soaring? Running 100W constantly would cost nearly £300 a year. I realise there's a section in the video that touches on this but it doesn't really go into much detail and the "low power" alternative costs more and STILL uses more energy than a dedicated router. Use your ISP box as a modem, disable its wifi, and then use a Google Router (or similar) for solid wifi connectivity.
I manage 3 corporate networks in the USA, but yes, i use serial to manage my equipment lol; I still enjoy your videos and keep doing everything you do. Thank you!
My Qotom mini PC has a serial port and it works fine for the console. The only issue is the DE-9 connector is for connecting to a modem, rather than another PC. And yes, I do mean DE-9. Anyone who calls those connectors DB-9 doesn't know what they're talking about. Check with industrial catalogs or Wikipedia on D-subminiature connectors.
I use a RPI4 with OpenWRT along with a Netgear poe AP. Works great and both are powered PoE via my switch. RPI4 has plenty of power, sips power and handle gigabit fine.
Get a Mikrotik hAP3 or AX2 for cheaper. Smaller package, decent wifi and superior power usage and absolutely amazing of an OS with container support. Can also run OpenWRT if needed.
@@vilnaszekje I absolutely worship their os, multiple routing tables, vlans, vpn server and a complex firewall on a 70$ router (not arm btw, newer are tho) is insane...
@@slimz. Mikrotik makes just about the best routers (in it's price range) and at the same time just about the worst WiFi APs in my experience. However pair it with Unifi APs and a Unifi Controller on a decent VM if there is a reasonably powerful server on the network, and you'd get the ultimate network.
@@zdanee That's why i said decent, they made a wave 2 package that supposedly helps but breaks their existing capsman management.... Probs don't even need a VM if you get it running inside the routers container or set it up once and forget about it.
Just a note, if this I225 is the same I225-V that's packaged with many motherboards, multiple people have had many issues with the chip. I would not really recommend it.
It would probably be good to indicate why this is necessary, since I've not gotten a router from the ISP since we stopping using DSL. The modem was fine, and the off the shelf wifi router was significantly cheaper for most of what we used it for. The modem can't be replaced by the end user since it's tied to or owned by the ISP, and the cost of this router was expensive and still required the use of a separate network switch (usually included in most routers already) and a separate wifi broadcast antenna (access point?). I can buy a new or used Wifi 5 or Wifi 6 router with dual band functionality and mulitple antennas for the same price or less than the cost of all this extra hardware, and I'm still not sure WHY this benefits the average user. Surely putting that money into a NAS would be far more beneficial to 99% of users, and the remaining 1% don't need this guide? I appreciate the guide, of course, but I'm just muddy on why this would ever be useful to me.
Much faster, better ping, lower jitter, also MUCH BETTER SECURITY. Most new all in one routers ship with outdated firmware & around 50% of NEW routers have known vaurnabilities which people & the companies just dont care about. It's gotten so bad that even the NSA & FBI have put out warnings to consumers about it.
@@WitchMedusa I assume this security aspect is accessible over wifi without (or maybe with?) password access to the network? As for better ping...I assume that's more a function of my ISP and modem than my router. I highly doubt for the internet service I have available I can get meaningfully better ping. But also why wouldn't they mention this in the video? Security vulnerabilities are nice to patch but not knowing the nature of them, they may or may not be a concern. Stuff like TPM security on W11 being mandatory is such a niche issue for most users that it's not worth the trouble of getting working on my machine even if it means not having the latest OS. As for jitter, would I really notice the better jitter if it is terrible coming straight from the modem?
If you invest in a NAS and want external access to it but then connect it to your cheap ISP supplied router you are simply asking for your NAS to be ransomewared. ISP supplied routers are designed to do the bare minimum so as to make them cheaper to produce and easier for the ISP's help centres to diagnose problems. As for buying a router? Even some of the high cost routers you can buy from the likes of Netgear etc are not much better security wise than ISP supplied routers. Look up the firmware problems relating to security on Netgear routers for instance and they are not alone. Your router's security is only as good as it's firmware and OS updates. I bought a small micro appliance as shown towards the end of the video and installed pfSense on it. pfSense is based on BSD with regular updates and a vast number of community users ensuring that any problems are very quickly dealt with due to it's open source nature. Plus pfSense allows the installation of a large number of packages, for instance I have pfBlockerNG installed which blocks adverts and malicious sites for all of my network. I have set up static ip's for most of my devices including my little server, something which a lot of ISP supplied routers have no way of doing, setup vlans in conjunction with guest access in my Unify access point to ensure that some devices are restricted to internet access only such as IOT devices. My daughter works from home and her employer is well known for snooping on the networks their employees connect to. So her work laptop is walled off from the rest of my network on a separate vlan. I have open VPN setup on my router with VPN access for my phone and laptop and also for my daughter's phone and personal laptop ensuring that no matter where we are in the world we can have a secure connection back to my UK ip address. Seriously, once you start investigating what you can do with a proper enterprise level firewall OS the possibilities are staggering. And the power consumption of one of these little devices is minimal, even in the UK.
Holy shit, 256 GB SSD! I know nothing about opnsense but my old pfsense setup had 4 GB and that was more than enough. With that kind of system (i7-3770) I would definitely install something like ESXi and run pfsense/opnsense as a virtual machine instead.
Nah, even with reasonable electricity prices, 60W+ of an old x86 PC vs ~10W of an ARM/MIPS 3-in-1 is a hard sell. And with the current energy crisis, you'd really _need_ some OPNsense features to go this way. I'll be sticking with OpenWRT on a 3-in-1.
you can just get an Intel ATOM CPU box with similar power draw but WAY more power. Good luck pushing Gigabit speeds on an ARM/MIPS box with traffic shaping, even my old J1900 Celeron at less than 10w can push me to my max line speed of 900mbps with shaping on Intel NICs
@@murtadha96 Yes, but this video was (mainly) about repurposing old PCs, which are way less efficient. I'm running a small offsite NAS on a ZimaBoard, so I'm well aware these options exist, but I'm not gonna spend $200 to replace my router with one if I don't need the extra power.
@@DuckMan77 And when I get a gigabit connection, I might consider it, but my 400MHz single core MIPS processor is more than enough to route my 100Mbps connection (including traffic shaping, not that seems to be hitting the CPU particularly hard).
I like that box, you can put coreboot on it :^) I myself use a PC Engines APU2, which is also x86, but will probably consume less power under full load than the optiplex at idle. And it has mPCIe slots for Wi-Fi, and comes with coreboot out of the box
What if the WAN interface is a VDSL one? You’ll end up using the ISP’s router for the WAN conversation and the PC as the router itself. Put into the mix also the switch, we are talking about three separate devices in total.
My cheap AX router running OpenWrt probably does more than a $300 "good" consumer level router, unless you need 2.5G or 10G LAN. The biggest problem with routers is garbage software and OpenWrt is the ultimate answer.
While I enjoy these videos showing how to do such things, I wish they dealt more with whether you really should. If you're going to suggest spending more money and using more power to run a solution that takes up more space, you should really give some solid motivations. Don't just tell me that the standard approaches are worse, show me concrete examples. When my old router died, I seriously considered replacing it with precisely this kind of DIY solution, but in the end, I concluded that a cheap all-in-one wireless router would do everything I needed. If you want more control, just load OpenWRT on your router.
I've been using OpenWRT for almost 2 years now. Its yet another option for OS. I'm sure it is a bit more restrictive in some ways, but it has plug in support and I've barely scratched the surface of what it can do. Been using a basic system with 8gb of ram and a haswell Pentium 2 core. Temps are great and CPU usage is minimal at most, with the highest ram usage I've seen at 70-80MB. I built the system in a sff chassis with a titanium rated psu. Great customization and I'm in the process of adding fiber connections with Intel SFP NICs. Even using software switching has been pretty solid. I can support well over 20 devices with zero performance degradation, even using a basic combo router as an AP. Granted my internet connection is only 300mbps, so even at full tilt there's not a ton of utilization.
The amount of times my Unifi 6 LR has just stopped working out of nowhere is really disappointing as hell especially since everyone said APs (especially ubiquiti) are better than AIO routers.
Apologies for the unaskedfor advice, but have you tried OpenWRT on it? I had a bunch of reliability issues on my Unifi 6 Lite that were all solved nearly 10)% once I switched. No downtime or anything since I switched.
I can vouch for both sides, I have had issues with both my 6 LR and nano HD. The wifi 5 LR was always solid. It is important to make sure you stay on top of the firmware updates though.
I have used pfSense for years and it’s great. You can easily load balance multiple connections and setup open vpn for remote access to your home network.
#1 Make sure DHCP is disabled on the modem or router that the ISP provides! This will cause random internet disconnects on devices if dhcp is also enabled on another device on same subnet. Ideally ISP modem can be set to BRIDGE MODE. Either by you or by asking them to do it on their end.
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
we want an entire definitive series about network, switches, router, access points, servers, racks, everything. Kinda like the "How to build a Network, the last guide you'll ever need!"
Who is we?
@@LMojzis at least everyone who liked this comment
Yes, please
"The last guide you'll ever need."*
*It will be outdated in 6 months.
As far as consumer-grade junk, yeah, not much has changed. Unbox it, plug it in, type in the passphrase printed on the bottom, and you're off to the races.
Networking in Enterprise has changed a LOT, and has trickled down into high-end consumer/prosumer/business. Layer 3 switches, VLANs, 2.5G/5G/10G/20G/40G LAN, SDN (software defined routers and firewalls), etc, etc.
Next time on LTT: build your own ISP
Sooooooo...when is this going to happen???? lol
Next-next time on LTT: Selling internet service to your neighbors.
Yes please 😩
@@ravanjock Next next next time on LTT: build your own power plant
Launch your own starlink
As a tech director for a school district, I had the lucky privilege of our big name firewall/router dying on a Friday afternoon. There was no way I was getting a replacement before Monday morning when staff and students arrived. pfSense saved the day with old on hand hardware, and haven’t gone back since. I easily built a cold spare for “just-in-case” purposes.
bruh i thought there was a random fly on my monitor cuz of your pfp .i was like damn middle of winter and i got a fly in here wtf lol
Wish I had this privilege, our router doesn’t want to die😖😖😡😡
Sounds like you ran into the old engineer's adage. There's nothing more permanent than a temporary fix. Glad it worked out for you in this case. :)
@@CDNKEEFTV Caught me too lol
Should have had a clustered firewall for resiliency.
What always puzzled me is that every provider says how much they care about their customer. But no one delivers a good router out of the box.
In the Netherlands there are options 👀
Since I use Starlink I don’t think I can get or upgrade the router
John Oliver has a web segment about cable boxes, I'm sure the same applies; lack of competition so lack desire to do anything on the ISP's side.
lot's of them FORCE YOU TO USE there router
@@whoathatcombo hey do you have a stable ping while gaming with starlink ?
I did this years ago before the age of cheap home routers. Loaded RH Linux and used the Router HowTo to set up the SW. It worked great for years but, honestly, better options came along and were actually cheaper. You can do tons of stuff with a PC based router, but most of us don't really need that.
I did the same thing circa 2001 using a Wondows Box and Internet Connection Sharing. However, these days a good all-in-one Router is just simpler and far more power efficient for most users.
This is the same thing I found. Tp link and ubiquiti both have great routers that are as good and more efficient for less money than anything I could put together
@@ericbsmith42TL;DR buy a Microtik hex lite for $40, get a switch if necessary, and get a used ubiquiti access point (or some other WAP) and you might be better off for about the same price as a "good" combo router.
I would agree if I haven't had hardware problems on nearly every single one I've had, even the ones I've gotten back from RMA. It honestly made me give up and put Pfsense on my home server and install an Intel i210 on it.
My main problems were that something would fail or be unreliable (wifi sometimes, Ethernet switch other times. This is on about 5 routers that I purchased myself in the last 6 years) and their support for getting a replacement would be completely useless. Had to wait over 2 months for a replacement on one, and 3 weeks was the fastest. I went and bought a used backup router (which had an unreliable Ethernet switch) for $20 and used that while I waited for Netgear or Linksys to get me a replacement. I'm not a normal user, a normal user would be without internet for weeks because of the poor service and it is NOT okay. Honestly I think a better solution than this video is to buy a cheap mikrotik router rather than what I did, but I did mine to learn things too. RouterOS is a little daunting, but not as bad as Pfsense.
i just need an internet connection that doesn't get disconnected every 5 minutes 😭
With mine, I have my main LAN, VLAN for guest WiFi, test LAN and a connection to a Cisco router. I have both IPv4 and IPv6, NTP server connected to stratum 1 servers and more.
really appreciate including the idle wattage and providing power efficient alternatives. Hoping to see power efficiency become a more common talking point in future videos
There’s devices named "Soft Routers" actually optimised to be a router. Its power consumption is lower, usually look like a Mini PC and you can install any os like RouterOS/OpenWRT/OpenSense etc
who cares
@@not-AIA lot of people do care. Reducing your power consumption is better for the environment and it saves money. I’m not from the US but from what I’ve heard the price of electricity is much lower there compared to European countries. Having a device that is more energy efficient can save you quite a bit of money
@@hannahl8164 how much are we talking tho? 30 bucks a yr? maybe so 2 bucks a month and that's on the very high side. and how is it better for the environment? by that logic I guarantee you an electric range uses waaaay more electricity.
An important note on 10gb nics: The x540-t2 NIC recommended here doesn't support 2.5gb or 5gb links. It appears most ISPs offering faster than gigabit are using 5gb links from their router/modem so you need a NIC that supports that.
The recommendation for a while has been x550-t2 based cards but those have almost doubled in price in the last year.
Great catch! Any 10GBaseT NIC manufactured before NBaseT became a thing won't support 2.5gb or 5gb, as 10GBaseT (802.3an) and NBaseT (802.3bz) are two different 802.x standards.
Considering that the x540-t2 NIC was manufactured in 2012, that's definitely an 802.3an NIC.
From my understanding, and I could be wrong:
- 802.3an can always negotiate 100Mbps, 1Gbps, and 10Gbps. Sometimes it can do 10Mbps depending on the manufacturer/chipset/drivers/etc. 802.3an CANNOT do 2.5Gbps or 5Gbps.
- 802.3bz can always negotiate 100Mbps and 1Gbps. I don't know if it can do 10Mbps--never tried. From there, it's a matter of whether or not the port is capable of 2.5Gbps, 5Gbps, or 10Gbps, and the higher speed ports can support the "next increment" down. So a 10Gbps bz port can support 5Gbps and 2.5Gbps. Likewise, a 5Gbps port can support 2.5Gbps (but NOT 10Gbps).
Connecting a 'bz' device to an 'an' port (or vice versa) can have various results:
- 10Gbps 'bz' to 10Gbps 'an': Negotiates 10Gbps.
- 10Gbps 'bz' to 5Gbps 'bz': Negotiates 5Gbps.
- 10Gbps 'bz' to 2.5Gbps 'bz': Negotiates 2.5Gbps.
- 10Gbps 'bz' to any speed port lower than the above: Negotiates the lower speed (although 10Mbps may not even work).
- 10Gbps 'an' to any 'bz' port (5Gbps or 2.5Gbps): Negotiates 1Gbps (that's the highest common speed both ends have in common).
- 10Gbps 'an' to any lower speed port: Negotiates the lower speed (although 10Mbps may not even work).
For sake of completion:
- 5Gbps 'bz' to 5Gbps 'bz': Negotiates 5Gbps
- 5Gbps 'bz' to 2.5Gbps 'bz': Negotiates 2.5Gbps
- 5Gbps 'bz' to any lower speed port: Negotiates the lower speed (but I'm having doubts about 10Mbps even working at all)
- 2.5Gbps 'bz' to 2.5Gbps 'bz': Negotiates 2.5Gbps
- 2.5Gbps 'bz' to any lower speed port: Negotiates the lower speed (but I'm having doubts about 10Mbps even working at all)
My x550-t2 works great, but it's speed is listed as "unknown" within pfsense. Otherwise it works great, even at 2.5gbe.
Also note, you can get the fiber versions of these cards and use a transceiver to convert the fiber connection into 10gbe Ethernet.
also, imho, once you're at more than a couple 10GbE links you really should be running dedicated enterprise/enthusiast style gear and layouts. a "core switch" with proper hardware-acceleration is like magic; at L2 even a cheaper switch can have eye-watering backplane speeds with VLANs and more and ASICs can use shockingly minimal power. I'd wait for at least a few more major-generational-improvements before it makes sense to process it in software.
having said that, software is a great place for a couple more complex VLAN or Firewall tricks even at L2... just make sure you have the performance and check power consumption
You could get an Intel 2.5 gigabit card
I would love to see one of these concepts built out of a rack-mount server. You can get fairly cheap 1U multiport switches that run at guaranteed gigabit speeds, and racks make everything tidier.
i have 5k worth in hardware in my rack, but those e300 are so adorable :D
Why tho? Sounds like a recipe for way higher electricity bills and a bunch of extra noise. I put win XP on an old G4 (w/ an array cause idiocy) tryna be cool and wanted to kill myself. It was like there was a frikkin Harrier jump jet landing constantly, even after I pulled the array.
@@YerBrwnDogAteMyRabit I got my gaming rig in a 2U. Because 1U was an issue with most motherboards being 1.3U.
It is not that loud if you know what you are doing. In fact when not under high load it is very quiet.
A Soekris 65 or PcEngines apu would fit the bill, and 1U.
@@jamegumb7298 Well (please forgive the late reply) that XP situation was def an experiment fo sho, but I'm sure if you used non- DC type hardware, you could put something a lot more energy efficient and quiet together. I'd imagine aesthetics-wise you could make it look good too.
@@YerBrwnDogAteMyRabit Any DC hardware would fit in 1U, I used 2U because it is a standard B650 mobo (those damn shields make it 1.3U, a barebones mobo might just fit but they are bottom bitch tier like A520 or A620 and lacked some stuff I wanted) with 5600X (Maybe 7600/7700 soon if I can be bothered to take it apart).
I suspect most would call it quiet, you just hear the exhaust start to blow under max load and it annoys me but the case is just tight. I do have surround sound with 8 inch woofers backed by compression drivers so this usually is not an issue. This is why I want to design my own 1.5U, put a large radiator in 2×120 or 2×140 (tilted, windtunnel, convection or ultra slim fans), better layout, I already designed the dual pump-res combo. I would have ordered it already but Protocase is not exactly cheap, 1st time has to be right.
I got a Xeon 4114 in a 1U case (runs BSD). That runs even quiter because I used a rather deep 44mm radiator (not easy yto get tho).
Also, if you used a reasonably modern, non-mini PC for the router, and you have the know-how, you can virtualize the rig and make it do more than just the router. One of the VMs would be the router, and you can have other tasks like NAS, game server, even your blog hosted on the single box.
Does recently modern include those dell optiplexes?
Do you know any guid to how to do this ?
I want host my opnsense router on my main pc on a VM and get that router to my pc internet
@@amirlator did u find a soluition
@@zeenxdownz If you have a relatively modern system, you can install Proxmox onto it, and then put VMs under that like OPNsense for example.
Advanced mode: Install pfsense on an intel nuc, then use vlans to separate wan and lan.
its a LOT easier to have one interface for wan and one interface for lan, but its totally possible to build a router with a single nic.
some NUC-alikes have dual nics too. also Globalscale makes some embedded multi-NIC devices.
best part about using pfsense is when your router gets hacked and your ip gets banned for being part of a bot net
@@snowyowlll best part of being a Muppet and misconfiguring it in some massive way
No need for different physical interfaces on a router. Connect it to a switch on a trunk port and go from there.
Check out videos by ServeTheHome. If you don't mind Chinese stuff, you can get a 200-300$ Atom/Celeron/Pentium box with up to six 2.5G NICs.
Please, if you make a video like this in the future... show viewers how they can setup separated networks (VLAN) for their network. For example having all IoT or "smart" devices on their own separated network? One of the basic security precautions one would take by setting up a router this way!
Setting up vlans in PFsense or opnsense is simple but it's configuring the switch and tagging/untagging the ports that is going to get most users. Not all switches are the same.
This isn’t necessary for homekit right?
@@raknikmik it all depends on how much you want to do and your threat model. But yes, if you're separating IoT devices, homekit should be as well. 1) so it can talk to LAN IoT devices easier 2) it talks to IoT devices A LOT 3) it's still an IoT device
Oh I am definitely interestet in vlans, but I just can not get to set it up.... Someday maybe.
This is a cool suggestion. As an owner of about 10 "smart" appliances, what kinds of vulnerabilities can be prevented by putting them on a separate network?
Mikrotik has some decent 10gbe options too. Also, remember there are the low power / S / T (like the 4770 is an 84w TDP, the 4770S is 65w, and the 4770T is 45w TDP) type intel chips for some of these machines that have a lower base clock with the same boost, they will save some extra power when idle.
The switches from that brand are crap, though. We have one in the office, and the connections are always being interrupted. And, despite being a 10 Gb switch, speeds from computer to computer are significantly lower.
@@samuellourenco1050 The ones I am running are working a treat so far. Though for 10gbe I am running fiber or DAC cables.
I have a feeling you have no knowledge of routerOS, didn’t switch to switchOS (not necessary), and didn’t troubleshoot on the forum.
I had the same problems as you did. But I knew that wasn’t an acceptable scenario from such a highly regarded company and I knew I didn’t know my way around routerOS. So I did some research. Yeh turns out you need to mess with some of the settings. If you are going to leave the switch running on routerOS then you need to turn off auto negotiate and manually set your speeds. Is it as easy to setup as an arista layer 2 set to DHCP? No way but those where $5000-10,000 switches when they first came out. If that’s what you want you can get them cheap I sold my 16 port SFP+ unit for just under $1000 and went out and bought a 4 ports SFP+ plus 1 1G switch for $150 from MikroTik and I’m very happy with it.
You just need to read and troubleshoot.
If you ever stick a wired ethernet transceiver in you need to go into settings and turn off auto negotiate especially if it isn’t the MikroTik branded transceiver. In fact if it isn’t the MikroTik transceiver your lucky if it works at all if you left auto-negotiate set to on.
MikroTik switches and routers are basically experimental-only, they're not that strong for daily usage and have a lower security level. You can always upgrade it through software etc but yeah
I switched off dedicated routers and built a pfsense box with a separate AP a long time ago and never looked back. Not only is it feature rich, but there's a huge benefit to being able to reset the wireless AP without killing the internet entirely. You also can do fun stuff like use VLANs and easily separate out your wireless traffic or guest network.
did you have to do any extra configuration for your WAN cable to connect into PFsense and just start working, or did you have to get additional settings info from your ISP and coordinate?
@@mitcHELLOworld I did have to make the wan vlam aware and tag a specific vlan
So is this better than say a wifi 6 asus router for 700$?
Honestly the price of an Edgerouter and ease of use IMO makes it better than building a PFsense box but that's just my opinion. Though I did not do to much advanced stuff my fav part was how magical the Smart Queue setting was, I could download a steam game without lagging anybody else on the network at nearly full speeds.
@@0hleg a million times better. dedicated APs are great at being APs and you can expand your network mesh-style without needing to mess with your router.
I still think it's not for most people unless they know what they are doing (considering half of my friends don't even know what is WAN and LAN) but I love this kind of tutorial video and have been using pfsense on a mini server for the last 5 6 years super stable and with way more features than the ISP router (VPN, DDNS, traffic monitoring, comprehensive firewall rule, and more).
If you don't know WAN v LAN you're not even watching this, or:
A: Checked out within anywhere from 15sec (or 0.25min) into the video or atmost 420s (7min) just staring at the screen
B: You thought doing it cheap versus a $400 mid-to-top tier consumer router was too much and there had to be a way to DIY, five minutes in already checking out on the $350 router and paying $50 for install to match that $400 including the cost value of doing nothing
C: Ask their friend/friend-zone friend/family member/tech friendly colleague to do it after a variable amount of probing and driving towards asking for help while doing your best to avoid directly asking for help
I think I'm a great example of the target, I was a young soon-to-be computer scientist, and videos like these expedite the process of finding all these cool ways to set up the tech around me, and give me a good foundation of information for learning further things.
That being said, I think LTT's target has never been the absolute laymen, but it's great when everyone has even a passive interest in this kind of stuff :)
That’s because, contrary to popular belief, pfsense is a firewall.
For most non enthusiasts the ISP supplied box "just works" and makes their support easier to manage. I personally have always used my own setups but it does mean if things go wrong it's down to me to fix!😅
You can also just buy a better one and use it instead of the provided one. Then you have more performance, more reliability and less power consumption than the DIY.
@@Pseudynom that's what most people do who don't want to use the ISP supplied one. However it's still down to you to fix if it goes wrong as many ISPs at least here, won't support you unless you use their kit.
they are not secure, look at pihole.
@@Diddydudat what would that achieve?
@@Diddydudat The ISP has nothing to do with the router you bought off Best Buy
Really appreciate you putting the idle wattage in at the end. Fancy doing a "DIY NAS vs dedicated" video looking at power consumption vs outlay/expandability too? Bonus points for talking about whether shutting a NAS down overnight to save power is going to result in b0rked harddrives
Power consumption is pretty big. I tend to keep my devices 5+ years. I ended up going with ASUS RT-AX/AC gaming routers with fast processors (researched on Wikipedia), TP-Link WiFi 5 APs for like $60 a piece, and some off the shelf TP-Link smart switches for $30-40. I modded the router's firmware, unlocked a ton of capabilities, had fun tuning it for weeks (I have 1ms jitter under load. Tuned Merlin FlexQOS is nuts.), and got a super reliable setup that is very power efficient and covers a huge home - for like $340 in cash outlay. It's more power efficient than an old PC router, and some of those costs would've been incurred anyway. I should come out well ahead in under 5 years. Internet equipment runs 24/7, so 5 or 10 watts adds up, and 35 watts certainly adds up fast! 0.8kwh/day in savings.
My NAS is Synology and is more efficient than having a PC running all the time, plus the web apps are pretty skookum.
@@BikeHelmetMk2 yeah, my media server is pulling 145W at idle, so 1kWh a night while doing basically nothing, but I'm concerned that spinning up and down the drives would drastically shorten their lifespan. It's really difficult to weigh up a couple of £ a month vs potentially £200 for an early drive failure
@@JamesScholesUK That is a tough one. I guess it depends on things like warranty duration... whether you'd chance it. For a bunch of 18TB drives, you would care less about the power consumption than the wear and tear.
My NAS consumes around 18 watts. Much more acceptable. I got it on a Prime day sale, so very reasonable price.
A FIY NAS will be so much of a better bang for your buck that power usage isn't a factor, especially since the majority of the power will be consumed by the hard drives.
35 watt usage is only $30.66 a year at 10 cents a kilowatt.
Personally I have PfSense (VPN) > OpenWRT router, gotta have that privacy game going
I would LOVE another separate video on this topic; maybe something like the live builds Linus does on occasion so we can follow/build along. I'm done and over with the internet issues we keep having and I myself would love something like that to help in the short term while I am learning/improving similar ideas for the future
What are your exact pain points with your current setup? Personally, I feel like a decent router/ap unit will work for 99% of home users.
Personally I use the Asus RT-AX82U (about $230) and that is enough to cover my entire 1600sq ft home plus back yard and front yard. I do have the device roughly in the center of my house. The Asus routers have an easy to use management UI and are extremely easy to set up. They are also loaded with semi advanced features as well that are pretty easy to use and configure (QOS, port forwarding, DDNS, Mac filter, wifi mesh, VPN client, parental features, etc.). There is also an app for mobile that makes management even simpler.
I had a dyi router at one point using a Dell optiplex 7060 w/ i7-8700T 32GB ram + Netgear 802.11ac access point...which the dell was over kill I know. I had 4 of them as part of my home lab and pulled one to build a "better router". I honestly didn't get any noticable gain over the an older Asus ac router I had. When it came time to upgrade to 802.11ax I just bout the Asus I mentioned and the Dell rejoined my lab.
I'd like to see a video like this expanded to have a roundup comparison between a DIY router and a similarly priced router. Include comparisons of power usage over time and under load, does the purpose built have performance issues over time as it heats up, does it throttle, etc. etc.
Are you kidding you know how quick 90% of companies who make routers would flag and black list this video to keep people from finding out how much they could Not give to the already made routers that are super cool sounding at the low cost of $399! Its a Gaming Router!!! That's also part of our sale point we have to add stickers too! Yes stickers and "For Gaming" everywhere!
@@Freakinkat I can't tell if your a troll or not. If that was truly the case with companies being able to flag videos they didn't like, RUclips wouldn't have any videos that are critical of items, or suggestions on DIY ways to not funnel money their way. Sure, in some conspiracy theory kind of way the videos could have issues, but its doubtful. Once you ioen that box on the internet it doesnt go away, NVidia and Hardware Unboxed. My comment would be something that falls under WHY LTT Labs was started, to offer full, in-depth, unbiased reviews
@@zach3893 😮💨just trolling, brother, plus rambling. That would be stupid rando and on a semi funny note just imagine a company literally like trying to stop someone from making a diy comparison video hating it and attempting to flag it as idk slander or copy rights claim just to curve viewers from seeing it like its some super omega secret that must never be seen or spoken 🤣, I don't know that would be nanners. Plus my comments like going one way then shifts to like some left Field rant.... It entertains me from time to time, it was like 3am I was pretty bored and tired, lemme make it l, pleeesseeeee? Or do you have any thoughts 🐱 ?
@@Freakinkat all good no worries.
As a German, I am pretty proud that they decided to use the German power price as an example for expensive power 😂
I'll be praying for y'all when I set my cheap gas furnace to a cozy 71F this winter.
Actually our gas prices up a lot too this year, even if it isn't nearly as bad as for y'all. So I'll be praying for you in my crisp 67F home. R
@@rightwingsafetysquad9872 I like living in an apartment surrounded by other apartments with poor insulation. I get no natural light but I only turn my heat on every few months to clear out the dust to avoid fire.
@@defaultkoala2922 now that's thinking inside the box =)
@Default Koala 👍 Yep, my neighbours are heating my appartment for me. Ever since my landlord renovated the building with top of the line insulation on the outside and leaving everythin inside the building as is (pretty common in Germany) I'm practically not turning on the heat at all.
@joebot86 😂😂😂
As a German, you are good to go too if your ISP is nice enough to offer you a Fritzbox.
Otherwise I'd probably have built a router like that myself already :o
I remember building my first router firewall in the late 90s with a pair of 3c509bc and a compaq deskpro with a 150mhz pentium Pro. Great to see this video, the configuration has got much more straightforward
3c509s were the BOMB back in the 90's. They were the default ethernet card in everything i had.
for those planning to go with this, just stick with the 4th gen or later sff pc and get the power consumption under 10-15watts (10watts while idling and under 15 watts during 1gbit NAT traffic) though this is just for the sff pc alone, adding a switch and 3 mesh wifi kit usually gets this power consumption around upto 25watts overall.
Can 2nd gen intel cpu work? Im thinking of i5 2400 to i7 2600
@@123dodo4na it's less efficient, there are dirt cheap 6th gens out there they should work fine
@@mudit1I wonder, would a laptop work with PF sense. because I’m thinking, I have a laptop with a i5-1035g1, 8GB of ram and a 256 GB ssd. Laptops are also power efficient as well, so I’m just wondering what you think
This is a great idea one thing to note is alot of older machines are lower power usage but you are still using alot more power for a desktop than a router.
If you combine & virtualise it, it can actually make sense power wise (eg; router, NAS, Print sever, VPN, pihole etc)
@@TheNpcNoob I was gonna say, a router/NAS combo alone feels like this would make the power cost worth it. Adding additional things such as a printer location really does seal the deal though.
@@RineyCat exactly and say you had a server running 24/7 for projects and/or labs then the above running in their own dockers only adds to the value prospect.
@@TheNpcNoob Agreed but that's assuming you already using those things. Most users typically will have a 10watt router from their ISP. So for the average user let's say typicall older desktop maybe will draw 200w with the ap aswell that's a substantial increase during some of the peak power pricing. I'm from the UK and alot of lower income family's are worried about heating their homes. So for anyone seeing the video the jump to high power consumption is worth the note. Probably would be a great video for LTT how to get the most with the least power budget.
@@final0after0image Being from the UK too, I completely agree.
Problem with using an old computer as a router is that it is directly connected to the internet and exposing the Intel management engine to the web. This can allow remote takeover of the router and your LAN. Only way to prevent that is to figure out how to flash coreboot onto the old computer.
Sure, technically someone could "takeover" your router and LAN. But for your average home user, I'd be willing to bet you're more likely to win the lottery than to have that happen.
@@mintymus Modern tools allow the whole IPV4 space to be scanned in minutes by any malicious actor. When someone finds a vulnerability or a weakness, they will scan the whole internet looking for targets. This is done programmatically, not manually. You don’t need to be special to be a victim of a script.
@@cuppacheese Ok but have you ever met someone who had this happen to them?
@@mintymus First off, I wouldn’t base my network security around anecdotal evidence. Secondly, if I did, I would have to ask everyone that has had a security compromise to allow me to do a postmortem investigation to determine the initial access vector. To answer your question, yes, I have dealt with machines that had been accessed in unauthorized fashion via the Intel AMT technology. Was it some kid trying to run PFSense on his Dad’s old computer, no. Still, security through obscurity is not security. Do things the right way the first time.
@@cuppacheese So do you never use your smart phone when you're not at home? In that long winded response, you still didn't say if it was someone you knew.
This is actually what got me intrested in Networking as a hobby.
I have been running pfSense for years now, recently during work from home I got another Internet connection from another ISP and have been running 2 WANs in Failover.
Edit: I was introduced to pfSense (and Unraid) by LTT!
you should try to configure some sort of aggregation to achieve higher internet speeds.
@@mitcHELLOworld Not in South East Asia
Love that you took electricity prices into account! Prices are insane here in Europe. The energy consumption of my ISP router-combo-thing was for me a reason to replace it by something better and more energy efficient.
yea it's terrible
War prices.
no fucking way thats true, combo units are passively cooled and run under 10 watts.
@@hailgod1 yeah AVM Fritz!Box 7490 takes 8-11 Watts on average and 22 Watts max.
@@Dudinify I have a Fritz box 7530?
You could run your router and Jellyfin + TrueNAS + etc server of that machine at the same time if you use virtualisation. I've done it in an old HP with the same specs as that Dell.
In your virtualisation software, assign one of the NICs to a virtual LAN interface, and connect all the VMs to it. Assign the other one to a virtual WAN interface, and connect only the OpnSense VM to it. Set up OpnSense as a VM in the same way as described in this video, set up Jellyfin and TrueNAS as described in other videos.
and then when one comes down they all come down
@@GreedoShot If one VM goes down, that doesn't affect the others. If the host goes down, then obviously that affects everything.
@@katrinabryce didn't say vm
Rocking opnsense for years now and glad you guys used it as well. I am also routing all my traffic through a VPN, blocked IoT devices from phoning home and rerouting all DNS requests to a pihole. Maybe do a follow up on this because there are great ways to DIY your home with stuff like that.
That would be an amazing video, I do something similar with PfSense but don't have any IoT devices.
My smart tv is an old laptop running linux with a bluetooth keyboard & mouse, also an xbox controller for retro game emulators.
Out of curiosity what VPN provider are you using? I am with IVPN just cause they seem the most privacy respecting but Mullvad seems pretty good too.
Some SD-WAN would be great too!
They already did a video on Pihole
Everytime I think of a project I want to take on, LTT comes out with a video exactly on the topic like if they read my mind. Awesome stuff.
Keep in mind that APs from manufacturers like Ubiquiti will either need a switch with PoE, a PoE injector or a power supply. I run several APs from Sophos at home power them via PoE directly from the switch. This part gets glossed over by Jake, which might lead to people not being able to power up their AP.
A poe injector is 10 bucks…
@@laurenzooo A passive one, you have to check if that injector pushes 24 or 48v and if the AP supports the voltage.
@@laurenzooo Yep, those from TP Link will set you back about 15 bucks or so. Typically they max out at about 15 watts, which is enough for APs, cameras, phones and so on. My switch can do up to 30 watts per device.
I believe people that don't know much about this stuff would assume that you need a power supply. Not everyone knows about PoE.
This was the best thing I could do for my house. PC Engines board running OpenBSD, and a Ubiquiti access point. Couldn’t be happier
I'd rather buy a good purpose built switch/router/AP than turn an old PC into a power hogging router without the other necessary functions, particularly the AP which will cost extra for another add-in card. Not every router is a cheap ISP provided router. Even if you got the PC and NIC free, the much higher power consumption is going to end up in a higher total cost of ownership.
eh
That’s what I was thinking…. As much as I’d love a PC router. I can’t get by the power consumption… I don’t even want to look at my energy bill😂
True but there are quite power efficient mini pcs on the market so it can sometimes make sense.
Especially if the place where you want to put the router is not where you need the best Wi-Fi reception.
You can run this on a small SBC that sips power (sub 10W) so I don't know what you're talking about.
Also, that Ubiquiti access point is probably 10x better than any "purpose built" all-in-one router/AP combo you can get off the shelf (even for 2-3x the price of that AP).
@@murtadha96 Yeah, for 100 bucks you get n on 2.4GHz in 2022. It's super awesome.
I put my serial connector away a few years ago, but i still love this type of video. Thanks!
Very cool to get this LTT scrapyard build after Wendell's Diy router video. I like the ecosystem of off the shelf products that help fill out the build. The MicroPC mentioned at the end is quite intriguing.
I feel allot of people upgrading to the 5800x3d are going to have spare processors to use in projects like this. The debate of whether to use a spare processor for a dedicated stream-capture device, router, server, NAS, etc. could benefit from it's own guide, I imagine LTT could make a decision-tree about the optimal use cases of different generations and tiers of cpus.
I love that the Optiplex has a 5.25" drive bay. Next time around you guys should Ball-out with a blinging 5.25" fan-controller/temperature-monitor from last decade.
A powerhungry desktop plattform for router is kind of overkill. If you are building a server thats going to be on 24/7 anyway install some router OS in a VM and use a dedicated switch so you can utilize that hardware instead of 24/7 running a desktop at 5% load.
Love this, always wondered how to do it. Only issue I have is, x86 is far less power efficient than the routers we get provided by ISP's. With energy costs sky rocketing (particularly here in the UK), every little bit of extra efficiency is critical at the minute.
Just use ARM devices. They use way less power. LTT is just ignoring openwrt, which is in my opinion, the best cost-effective alternative
A mini pc should be good enough for your requirements. There are a lot out there which consume way less power (from 5watts to around 25 watts). Openwrt is not a full fledged firewall and the AP hardware may not be good enough to run all firewall features (I have both openwrt and Opnsense).
I’ve just bought a used Synology router for £35 since I want DDNS functionality for watching tv abroad without paying for a VPN. I suppose ultimately it depends on what your use case is, this for me is fine. However if you want better Wi-Fi I know that virgin is giving out new Wi-Fi 6 routers for free to customers that have the gen 3 hub or older.
Repurposing a tower as a router is nice if you have cheap energy, but here in the UK thin clients are your friend. Google Parkytowers, this one person has put a lot of effort into documenting most of the thin clients you can find used for cheap, including their idle and running power draw. I'm currently running an IGEL M340C with OpenWRT as my home router, which I got off eBay for £20. It has an AMD Jaguar quad core, draws 7-12 watts while in use, and works perfectly with a Realtek gigabit ethernet USB adapter for the WAN connection. I also run a 10ZIG 58xxQ as an adblocker/VPN gateway. With the powersave governor enabled in Linux, it only draws 4-5 watts from the wall while fully saturating my ISP's download speed.
Arm sbcs exist…. So get a box and set it up……
My ISP has a 2GB fiber option, so I bought a n100-based mini PC with multiple i226 2.5gb NICs off Aliexpress. I installed OPNsense and it's been rock solid and very fast. It's just far more complex than an off-the-shelf router, and I've needed tutorials to even wade into something like port forwarding, which was far easier on consumer devices.
Here in Germany we actually got FritzBoxen. These are manufactured by a German company named AVM. These things often outperform even the Asus or Ubiquiti Router combos.
Most ISPs bundle these with their services, so at least that is one good thing about Germany's internet
PS: These seem not very common other than the countries directly around Germany :c
FritzBox FTW!!!
FritzBox sind scheiße, my bad but it's true.
Just got the 7590AX from my Provider.
Even the NAS function is usable.
Only once I had a router by another company than avn and I was shocked that I couldnt even activate wifi (it was blocked by the provider, you had to extra pay for it).
Best thing about those fritz boxes is, that even the most basic ones can be manually configured as you want them to be. Yeah one good thing about Germany.
yea, the routers are "fine", but provide shitty wifi and the real issue is that our actual internet speed and quality is kinda awful in most rural areas.
I’m incredibly surprised they didn’t mention the alternative to making this unit. This is a power hungry, unreliable solution to something that can be had for $60-90 getting a standalone router. The ubiquiti edge router x and tp link Omada router are 4 port routers without an all in one setup so you can buy separate high end access points
An OPNsense firewall has quite a few more features...
Edge router and gigabit up/down yeah right
i wouldnt say unreliable I bypassed my bell canada fibre modem. With a dual 10 gbit network card with sfp modules over 2 years ago. I use it for my 1.5 GBIT bell fibre connection. i bought the optiplex for 40$ I added the smallest cheapest ssd i could find. I have yet to get an outage that was fault of the equipment or pfsense
I would not describe this solution as unreliable, power-hungry. That largely depends on the hardware you choose to run it on. I have had pfsense or similar running for almost 10 years now and have had very few issues that I did not inflict upon myself LOL. These platforms offer even more officially supported flexibility than edge router x for sure. I can not speak to Omada but as it's more or less a clone of Unifi, my bet is pretty good it is also limited in flexibility. now could most home users be served just fine by one of these devices of course. quick side note, while I am aware solutions like this support more, features if you are willing to go poking around in the Json configs it's not officially supported and could break with a system update or clicking the wrong thing in the web interface so I don't count them. No hate just adding my thoughts to the matter, I won't be giving up my pfsense box anytime soon tho. Hope you have a wonderful day.
Neither can handle non-offloaded 500/500, nevermind gigabit, without buffer bloat.
Thanks for the Etcher shoutout - loving your videos as always 😁
very sad comment
If you have more than two ports, you can make the admin port one of those so you can make it harder to crack. The admin interface is only available via that port.
Would have been really nice to see how to set up specific features - such as a dedicated AP for IOT devices, or other features that are seldom used but really need to be for security
look at Level1 Tech. They have a home automation series that may go into detail. It was a while ago but that doesn't move too fast.
@@stephen1r2 thanks I'll look into it
Why on earth would you waste an AP and dedicate it to IoT devices? You'd want to setup a VLAN for them instead
@@Ryne785 I do both, I have an AP dedicated to the IoT devices and that entire AP is on it's own VLAN for IoT devices.
@@lighthawk95 Why? Waste of an AP when you can use the IoT VLAN across all APs.
Nice video. One thing. The speed test. Often it is more useful to measure PPS (packets per second). High PPS, that's what the gamer needs. Although speed test is also important.
If you're not going to route in software, and aren't setting up packet queues, than you should probably just stick to openwrt flashed over cheaper hardware. You'll get the same configuratbility, and the same network performance. Using a full pc should be done when you want to improve network prioritization, filtering, and detection using kernel processed packets
8:25 The "this guy" switch is an Edimax 8 port model. I like them because they are a) cheap (but they are all quite cheap these days, so yeah) and b) (this is the big one for me) THEY HAVE THEIR LITTLE POWER PLUG ON THE SIDE OF THE RJ45 PORTS. This makes it so much easier to cable manage by not having a cable stick out on BOTH long edges. Also, it runs on 5V and draws a maximum of 3 watts, so you can probably run it off a USB 3.0 port.
I’ve always wanted to do this just to do it. There have been so many times I’ll randomly come across a board with insane amounts of ethernet connectivity built in, and that or a switch is the first thing that comes to mind. There’s just something about knowing you have the fastest router possible.
Two Linus videos in a day? What is this, Heaven?
I think we all died
Calm down, thirsty.
@Unauthorized D035 lol
Lol god comment
Don't forget we didn't have one yesterday
Totally a great idea to potentially reduce e-waste and have been doing similar things with thin clients and half length Lan cards for years … OS up to you to choose but both Pfsense and opnsense are great you can also opt to use MikroTik router OS for x86 to make it simple and have a shitload of features and potentially do the DYI ISP if you want :) other available options are also openwrt that also runs on x86 a damn lot faster
and potentially become the DYI ISP* :D
By the way, Mikrotik hardware is quite chip and powerfull, crazy feature for the price
Totally spit my coffee out when the family picture came up! Didn't expect that, but it was fantastic.
Another good budget option for a NIC on OpnSense is the HP NC364T. It's a quad port gigabit card, so you can even set up additional interfaces for guest networks or for failover if you have a cellular network backup. You can frequently find them on eBay for pretty cheap, I think I got mine for $25ish USD.
+1 for the NC364T. I tried 2 other 4-port Intel GbE NICs (one Dell and one other ancient Intel 4 port card, probably Dell too) and had all sorts of issues including the motherboard not POSTing. Threw the HP NC364T in and all sorted 🙌
@@ChristopherHammond13 Yep. I use this model card as well. Works great with pfSense.
And don't forget Mellanox cards on eBay, for 10G or higher.
@@LtdJorge Yep, I bought several of these off of e-bay. Great value!
I’d definitely be interested in learning about VLANs with this system, as well as VPNs and installing pi-hole, to have a single box handle all of the networking for a house.
Trust me you do not want VLANs in your home network. It is just not worth the additional headache of setting it up and troubleshooting in the future.
@@lostintechnology1851 it is if you care about network design, but yea, your average joe, the 99.9% of people dont need that, and that includes most people who watch these videos too. lol
Also@OP if you're interested, jsut google what vlans are, literally if you're interested you'd look it up vs posting and waiting for Linus Corp to make a video about it. Off the bat, not what it takes.
Fun fact - with OPNSense you can install Adguard on it and it does exactly the same things as does pi-hole, but without needing a pi..
Yeah VLAN at least the IoT devices including cellphones to their own VLAN as those use casting and what not to other IoT devices. IoT is a massive issue with security updates and not worth taking the chance if you local fileshare and have PC's that are on all the time. So no VLANs aren't a big deal if you have just a few devices like a phone and a Firestick, but if you have a robot vacuum and smart outlets or wifi lightbulbs... Yeah VLAN that.
@@cmdbill you'd be amazed how many iot devices reach out to China, especially smart bulbs.
Coming back to this video and one important point they missed here about APs is that when purchasing one, regardless of new or secondhand, that you should figure out if it needs a separate controller to set up and manage the AP. Ubiquiti and Cisco APs usually need some sort of device running controller software, at least temporarily.
If your internet is not more than 1G you could also get an ubiquity edge router which is very configurable and relatively cheap depending on the model you get.
Yes, one of those, a switch and a couple of APs. I ran a powerline link to an upstairs section as well (apartment, so no holes allowed.)
*Really* pleased to see you opted for OPNsense. I've ran it now for 6 years, and absolutely love it. Also FWIW their IRC channel is great for quick help. I've upgraded and upgraded and upgraded, without issue.
For the price of the components (not to mention power consumption) you can have new allin1 wifi router that is way better than what your ISP has provided and is much simpler to manage. For home users this is like a hammer to kill a mosquito.
Eaxctly what i was thinking. 24/7 power usage adds up. I also bet the ping delay is less then going though purpose built hardware made to do the job then a universal computer
I would definitely use a Protectli vault if you are going down this route. Unless you need fibre networking, then you would be talking spf cards in a poweredge server.
Also, as for opensense vs pfsense, opensense uses hardenedBSD, which is a bit better in terms of security. As for serial, it is generally used for embedded devices or devices with no video output for anyone wondering. (An example would be cisco routers)
You should make a video about Ventoy, this is a bootloader for USB sticks, where you can just put your ISOs on the drive and can select them during booting from the stick. I use mine to install servers, Windows pcs as well as fiddling around in live Linux distributions like Kali or gParted. Would be an awesome topic for a video that hasn’t really been covered (as I know)
I'll give it a try. I've tried some others that claimed the same but the results were not what I expected.
Ventoy + a fast 256GB stick = a hell of a tool box. 💪
Another great option might be an old laptop. They usually have much better power efficiency, built in screen and keyboard for debugging, and a free PCI-e x1 slot if you remove the Wifi card, or a PCI-e 4x slot if you remove the m.2 drive, giving you enough IO to potentially put network cards in, or maybe even a sata controller or raid card for a NAS. If it's a somewhat recent machine you can even run plex and do live transcoding with Intel QuickSync or AMD AMF encoders.
Also, free UPS for the router and all connected devices if your laptop's battery is still good. You could probably even DIY a way to power the ISP modem from your laptop's USB ports, which would keep it running during a power outage.
Do you have a laptop setup like this for yourself? Sounds interesting but i'd be a bit concerned if my main router is a disassembled laptop with 2 m.2 to pcie NIC adapters swinging around.
I feel like there's a bit of a contradiction between "old laptop" and having an "M.2 drive".
@@Sabrinahuskydog brah, i used to run mmorpgs 24/7 on laptops. Never once had one die from 2007-2018 when I then switched to a desktop I built. Only time I'd turn them off is when I knew it was time to clean them out and apply new thermal paste. As long as your vents aren't blocked, laptops will never overheat running as a router. You saw that it was using not even 10% of a desktop CPU in the video, that laptop will be running at room temp pretty much for the life of it.
@@Sabrinahuskydog, no? The cooling fans will eventually die after two or three years, but even then, it'll just throttle.
@@alexdi1367 You could set the fans to only kick in when temps are high and have it passively cooled when idle to save the fan from wearing out. They are usually easy to replace anyway.
Really enjoying this kind of videos coming back to LTT - tbh was missing them as LTT shifted away from their 2015-2016 content.
Great intro video for this concept. Increasing network knowledge is better for everyone and helps prevent all sorts of shenanigans that ISPs pull because they assume people don't understand and will use the defaults.
When raspberry pi's were available you could also turn one into a router as well. Now I wish you guys would take on a really complex setup like running Proxmox on desktop hardware, similar to the optiplex, and run a router in a container with load-balancing and revers proxies. On top of other cool homelab stuff, eg trunas or plex
I am just as we speak venturing into this… not for the feint hearted. Any recommended guides?
I have proxmox on a ryzen 5900X, but the MB is a workstation/server board to support ECC RAM. Desktop servers are fun but extremely finicky due to parts.
@@toaster775 Level1Techs has a lot of really great videos on homelabs.
@@toaster775 There is a Guide by Learn Linux TV. Its long but very good ( ruclips.net/p/PLT98CRl2KxKHnlbYhtABg6cF50bYa8Ulo )
Isn't it bit slow? I doubt that it's even 7% of i7, not to mention that LTT only used their monstrosity only with single device connected to it.
As of Nov 11 in USA, TP-Link TL-SX3008F is ~$260 for a 10G all-fiber managed switch. If your DIY router have optical 10Gbps ports (that is, if you are using cheap second-hand server network cards, for example the Mellanox CX311A,) consider this over the 10G copper options. Fiber also permits longer runs.
Good vídeo, OPNSense is great. Also, you can buy a Mikrotik router. Double than Cisco professional capabilities, one hundreth the price, 10 gigabit ports configurable as router or switch, 15 watts, outstanding community support.
The thing is: Microtik has tons of options, more than you will ever need in fact - but is geared towards professionals. It is absolutely not user friendly.
I'm loving this videos. They'll be really useful when people starts upgrading the motherboards on their Framework Laptops or something similar.
I have a Framework and I always wondered what would I use the motherboard for if I upgrade it in a few years. So thanks for the ideas
Oh poop that's a genius use case. It's amazing how much use old technology has.
somehow I feel like German authorities would not appreciate me doing this, so I know what my next project is
Unless you want to run a hypervisor and virtualize the firewall, SSD and an i7 is overkill for home users.
On a side note, thin clients with pcie ports can take care of being power efficient.
SSD helps to reduce the power consumption.
@LMojzis
You'll save like ~8watts. Depending on how much electricity costs in your area, the purchase price of a $15 SSD could break even in less than 6 months.
For me, averaging on-peak and off-peak power costs for running it 24 hours a day, it would take me a little over 2 years go break even. Most people are going to get more than 2 years of use out of a PfSense/OPNsense box like this, and even if they end up changing to a new box, the drive is still useable for other purposes, so it's still probably worth it in the long run if you don't mind paying the energy costs upfront.
There's also the probability that the cost of electricity will increase over time, so you may end up seeing a faster ROI on the purchase of an SSD.
And not that it's really that big of a concern, because you likely won't be rebooting the firewall that often, but significantly faster boot times are also a nice bonus of solid state storage.
well they are going BSD sop bhyve it is :P
In Germany we have AVM and their Fritzboxes and their amazing devices. Not upgradeable but very strong when it comes to compatibilty, perfomance and features. They often cost some euros extra to your contract but they are definitly worth it.
some are a little bit upgradeable ^^ as avm doesnt differentiate the hardware between some models but releases them with different firmware, you can sometimes "hack" a different firmware onto it to unlock 100mbit to 1gbit on more ports or usb3 instead of usb2
I did that with my fritzbox 7520 and flashed a 7530 firmware onto it to get all its benefits. I see that as an upgrade of sorts (but not intended yes)
@@DiverseGreen-Anon yes indeed or what i also saw where some large Antennas people put on some models 😂
I love these "find another way to use your computer" videos. I want to make them all! I don't know what I don't know, so keep showing me new ideas!
After getting really frustrated about ISP router and its wifi I purchased from ebay a old juniper srx firewall with 16x1Gbit ports and a decent refurbished wifi router. It costed me total 100 bucks with the shipping. Set the wifi to AP and all is really nice. Only issue was that at that pricepoint the firewall doesnt have PoE so I need to use separate swich for the cameras. Oh yeah and the another issue I had was that the firewall needed a console cable.
11:18 😂 omfg, YOU KILLED ME with that family photo. Like I can legit die happy right now because of how hard that hit my funny bone.
Laughter aside, KUDOS! This was an amazing project. Even though I’m deep in the UniFi ecosystem, I thoroughly enjoyed this and would still love to try this build someday.
The heck with Linus. Jake Tech Tips gets 10/10. I love these kind of videos. They make me want to go out and buy stuff I don't need just to try it.
One important piece left out of this video is that the ISP "router" is also a modem. so you cant just chuck it out. you need it to do the modem stuff. you can put it in bridge mode and connect it to your pfsense.
Or just buy a Motorola surfboard modem and ditch their equipment fee and garbage equipment.
I've been running a similar combo for a few years. One thing to note is if you need to replace the case fan, you will need to find one with matching RPM specs. I replaced the case fan with an 80mm noctua and the bios had a hissy fit as the ran RPM was a lot lower. (You can't permanently bypass the warning).
Optiplex 9020 with an Intel 4570, 8gb ram and 256gb SSD with an Intel quad gigabit NIC.
You definitely need to take power into account though, the 4th gen Intel CPUs were a fair bit more power efficient then 3rd gen. However even I'm considering replacing this with something more efficient. My setup uses around 30-40w and costs around $90-100 AUD per annum.
Opnsense is cool and super powerful for nerds who want to run a homelab, but its overkill for the average user.
Don't forget you can get a "t" class lower power processor for $8-$12. Such as i5 3470t or i3 3240t, also available in Pentium and from 2nd-12th gen (4th gen and up highly recommended). But you can also disable hyperthreading and turbo in BIOS to get less power usage as well.
And shut off anything you aren't using in the BIOS to save some more power. Run it off an Intel Optane 16gb NVMe drive in a PCIe adapter if you can. Use the USB for Clover bootloader if needed.
It’s a good day when LTT uploads nerdy homelab/server content 😍
This was very interesting for me because I have very little knowledge on the subject. How ever a comparison vs an off the shelf ISP supplied modem would of been interesting to see the cost/benefit of building your own.
Now how do you set up your devices to work on this router? Left the most important part out for the layman who understands what you did somewhat but doesn’t know why or how to use it past the optiplex unit. Setting up devices to use this is important to understand for the security minded. We need a part 2
So you're replacing a 24h/7days a week 5Watt device with a 100+Watt device at a time when electricity prices are soaring? Running 100W constantly would cost nearly £300 a year. I realise there's a section in the video that touches on this but it doesn't really go into much detail and the "low power" alternative costs more and STILL uses more energy than a dedicated router.
Use your ISP box as a modem, disable its wifi, and then use a Google Router (or similar) for solid wifi connectivity.
Yep exactly why years ago I moved my home server from an old pc to an rpi. No way I want 100w on 247 with energy at 34pkw!
I would never use an old PC as a 24/7 Router. For testing ok but nothing more. The Intel NICs mentioned here are old and power hungry too.
You can install it on a 10-15w device
but then what would you have learned
I manage 3 corporate networks in the USA, but yes, i use serial to manage my equipment lol; I still enjoy your videos and keep doing everything you do. Thank you!
My Qotom mini PC has a serial port and it works fine for the console. The only issue is the DE-9 connector is for connecting to a modem, rather than another PC. And yes, I do mean DE-9. Anyone who calls those connectors DB-9 doesn't know what they're talking about. Check with industrial catalogs or Wikipedia on D-subminiature connectors.
I use a RPI4 with OpenWRT along with a Netgear poe AP. Works great and both are powered PoE via my switch. RPI4 has plenty of power, sips power and handle gigabit fine.
Get a Mikrotik hAP3 or AX2 for cheaper. Smaller package, decent wifi and superior power usage and absolutely amazing of an OS with container support. Can also run OpenWRT if needed.
I have MikroTik lte router from my ISP and i dont have any internet drops (unless 4g craps out)
@@vilnaszekje I absolutely worship their os, multiple routing tables, vlans, vpn server and a complex firewall on a 70$ router (not arm btw, newer are tho) is insane...
@@slimz. Mikrotik makes just about the best routers (in it's price range) and at the same time just about the worst WiFi APs in my experience. However pair it with Unifi APs and a Unifi Controller on a decent VM if there is a reasonably powerful server on the network, and you'd get the ultimate network.
@@zdanee That's why i said decent, they made a wave 2 package that supposedly helps but breaks their existing capsman management.... Probs don't even need a VM if you get it running inside the routers container or set it up once and forget about it.
You look like Ed Kemper actor of the Mindhunter series
Omg that's so true 🤣
I don’t know how you guys do it I’m always thinking about what to do and then you guys post a video of how to do it😂
Just a note, if this I225 is the same I225-V that's packaged with many motherboards, multiple people have had many issues with the chip. I would not really recommend it.
It would probably be good to indicate why this is necessary, since I've not gotten a router from the ISP since we stopping using DSL. The modem was fine, and the off the shelf wifi router was significantly cheaper for most of what we used it for. The modem can't be replaced by the end user since it's tied to or owned by the ISP, and the cost of this router was expensive and still required the use of a separate network switch (usually included in most routers already) and a separate wifi broadcast antenna (access point?). I can buy a new or used Wifi 5 or Wifi 6 router with dual band functionality and mulitple antennas for the same price or less than the cost of all this extra hardware, and I'm still not sure WHY this benefits the average user. Surely putting that money into a NAS would be far more beneficial to 99% of users, and the remaining 1% don't need this guide?
I appreciate the guide, of course, but I'm just muddy on why this would ever be useful to me.
Much faster, better ping, lower jitter, also MUCH BETTER SECURITY.
Most new all in one routers ship with outdated firmware & around 50% of NEW routers have known vaurnabilities which people & the companies just dont care about.
It's gotten so bad that even the NSA & FBI have put out warnings to consumers about it.
@@WitchMedusa I assume this security aspect is accessible over wifi without (or maybe with?) password access to the network?
As for better ping...I assume that's more a function of my ISP and modem than my router. I highly doubt for the internet service I have available I can get meaningfully better ping. But also why wouldn't they mention this in the video? Security vulnerabilities are nice to patch but not knowing the nature of them, they may or may not be a concern. Stuff like TPM security on W11 being mandatory is such a niche issue for most users that it's not worth the trouble of getting working on my machine even if it means not having the latest OS.
As for jitter, would I really notice the better jitter if it is terrible coming straight from the modem?
If you invest in a NAS and want external access to it but then connect it to your cheap ISP supplied router you are simply asking for your NAS to be ransomewared. ISP supplied routers are designed to do the bare minimum so as to make them cheaper to produce and easier for the ISP's help centres to diagnose problems. As for buying a router? Even some of the high cost routers you can buy from the likes of Netgear etc are not much better security wise than ISP supplied routers. Look up the firmware problems relating to security on Netgear routers for instance and they are not alone. Your router's security is only as good as it's firmware and OS updates. I bought a small micro appliance as shown towards the end of the video and installed pfSense on it. pfSense is based on BSD with regular updates and a vast number of community users ensuring that any problems are very quickly dealt with due to it's open source nature. Plus pfSense allows the installation of a large number of packages, for instance I have pfBlockerNG installed which blocks adverts and malicious sites for all of my network. I have set up static ip's for most of my devices including my little server, something which a lot of ISP supplied routers have no way of doing, setup vlans in conjunction with guest access in my Unify access point to ensure that some devices are restricted to internet access only such as IOT devices. My daughter works from home and her employer is well known for snooping on the networks their employees connect to. So her work laptop is walled off from the rest of my network on a separate vlan. I have open VPN setup on my router with VPN access for my phone and laptop and also for my daughter's phone and personal laptop ensuring that no matter where we are in the world we can have a secure connection back to my UK ip address. Seriously, once you start investigating what you can do with a proper enterprise level firewall OS the possibilities are staggering. And the power consumption of one of these little devices is minimal, even in the UK.
Holy shit, 256 GB SSD! I know nothing about opnsense but my old pfsense setup had 4 GB and that was more than enough.
With that kind of system (i7-3770) I would definitely install something like ESXi and run pfsense/opnsense as a virtual machine instead.
Nah, even with reasonable electricity prices, 60W+ of an old x86 PC vs ~10W of an ARM/MIPS 3-in-1 is a hard sell. And with the current energy crisis, you'd really _need_ some OPNsense features to go this way.
I'll be sticking with OpenWRT on a 3-in-1.
Electricity isn’t particularly expensive. If you’re desperate, turn up your gas heating and down any electrical heaters you may have to compensate.
you can just get an Intel ATOM CPU box with similar power draw but WAY more power. Good luck pushing Gigabit speeds on an ARM/MIPS box with traffic shaping, even my old J1900 Celeron at less than 10w can push me to my max line speed of 900mbps with shaping on Intel NICs
You do realise there are x86 SBCs that consume ~10W and can run this and a dozen other applications, right?
@@murtadha96 Yes, but this video was (mainly) about repurposing old PCs, which are way less efficient. I'm running a small offsite NAS on a ZimaBoard, so I'm well aware these options exist, but I'm not gonna spend $200 to replace my router with one if I don't need the extra power.
@@DuckMan77 And when I get a gigabit connection, I might consider it, but my 400MHz single core MIPS processor is more than enough to route my 100Mbps connection (including traffic shaping, not that seems to be hitting the CPU particularly hard).
I like that box, you can put coreboot on it :^)
I myself use a PC Engines APU2, which is also x86, but will probably consume less power under full load than the optiplex at idle. And it has mPCIe slots for Wi-Fi, and comes with coreboot out of the box
The APU2 draws only 6-10W, it's definitely less than an Optiplex needs.
What if the WAN interface is a VDSL one? You’ll end up using the ISP’s router for the WAN conversation and the PC as the router itself. Put into the mix also the switch, we are talking about three separate devices in total.
I would love to see a head to head comparison between this $220 diy and a $300 "good" router
Unless you are using some advanced functionality there will be no differnce
My cheap AX router running OpenWrt probably does more than a $300 "good" consumer level router, unless you need 2.5G or 10G LAN. The biggest problem with routers is garbage software and OpenWrt is the ultimate answer.
alternatively, get a Mikrotik since RouterOS is crazy good
Building one of these today after discovering that there are basically no decent 2.5 Gbps routers on the market. Thanks for the tutorial!
While I enjoy these videos showing how to do such things, I wish they dealt more with whether you really should. If you're going to suggest spending more money and using more power to run a solution that takes up more space, you should really give some solid motivations. Don't just tell me that the standard approaches are worse, show me concrete examples. When my old router died, I seriously considered replacing it with precisely this kind of DIY solution, but in the end, I concluded that a cheap all-in-one wireless router would do everything I needed. If you want more control, just load OpenWRT on your router.
But not all hardware (ex Linksys, D-Link) NAT routers support that third party firmware
0:32 My dad's dusty old what? 😮
I've been using OpenWRT for almost 2 years now. Its yet another option for OS. I'm sure it is a bit more restrictive in some ways, but it has plug in support and I've barely scratched the surface of what it can do.
Been using a basic system with 8gb of ram and a haswell Pentium 2 core. Temps are great and CPU usage is minimal at most, with the highest ram usage I've seen at 70-80MB. I built the system in a sff chassis with a titanium rated psu. Great customization and I'm in the process of adding fiber connections with Intel SFP NICs. Even using software switching has been pretty solid. I can support well over 20 devices with zero performance degradation, even using a basic combo router as an AP. Granted my internet connection is only 300mbps, so even at full tilt there's not a ton of utilization.
But ISP doesn't allow using any other router
The amount of times my Unifi 6 LR has just stopped working out of nowhere is really disappointing as hell especially since everyone said APs (especially ubiquiti) are better than AIO routers.
Apologies for the unaskedfor advice, but have you tried OpenWRT on it? I had a bunch of reliability issues on my Unifi 6 Lite that were all solved nearly 10)% once I switched. No downtime or anything since I switched.
I can vouch for both sides, I have had issues with both my 6 LR and nano HD. The wifi 5 LR was always solid. It is important to make sure you stay on top of the firmware updates though.
@@daboross2 no, i didn’t even know that was a thing… I might try it thanks!
Interesting. My Dream Machine Pro has been beyond rock solid.
My U6 Lite has been an absolute champion, zero issues whatsoever.
It's very likely the problem is in your router (not access point).
I have used pfSense for years and it’s great. You can easily load balance multiple connections and setup open vpn for remote access to your home network.
$70 for a screwdriver HAHHAHAHA Your kidding right, how many sets of bits does it come with, is it at least 1?
there's a lot of HOW but not a lot of WHY in this video
#1 Make sure DHCP is disabled on the modem or router that the ISP provides! This will cause random internet disconnects on devices if dhcp is also enabled on another device on same subnet. Ideally ISP modem can be set to BRIDGE MODE. Either by you or by asking them to do it on their end.
YOU STOLE MY COPUTER!?!?
$70 for a screwdriver 😂
That's insane
and it was worth every penny of it