Y'all should really do a video dedicated to "here's the stuff you can turn an older PC into" like this cause it feels like there's so many options that no one knows. I didn't even know this was possible.
God I would love this. I’ve already done the home server thing and a few other pet projects but stuff like this is my jam! It helps to have a stack of old scrap pcs lying around
For home or small business sure, anything more than that and you’ll be needing specialist hardware. A cpu can handle a fair bit of traffic but quickly overwhelmed - this is where companies like Cisco come in, developing ASICs to absolutely annihilate packet processing.
He doesn't have a clue here and it shows. Whoever wrote this seemingly wanted to make a quick video on pfsense, but the info about regular routers is just stupid. Yes, they can vary between pure junk and good, but no average person needs to worry about creating a pc with pfsense which also uses more power to run 24/7. Just buy a good wifi router. LTT could have actually recommended some and it would have been much more helpful. There is nothing special about pfsense. His info about routers using chips that are from 2012 is pure garbage. Someone likely confused the ARMv7-A architecture with the age of the chip itself. Sure, the architecture is from 2011, but the chips are much newer. Wifi6 routers use all in one SOCs that are processors and wifi radios on one chip. When buying one, the difference of 40 dollars in price can sometimes make a real difference, but sometimes more expensive isn't really going to benefit you much. All you need to do is select a good one and you are fine. Everyone's desktop processors are using the x86 architecture from 1985 and the x64 architecture from 2003. As an example, the TP-Link AX5400 router is perfectly fine. It isn't too ridiculously expensive considering how insane routers can go up to and it is even better than some higher priced ones. It uses a chip from 2019 that is an ARMv7-A processor and two wifi6 radios.
@@_PatrickO I run an RT-AX58U with asuswrt-merlin and it got all the options I need. I could even install aditional packages if I wanted to. That's why I 100% agree with you.
@@_PatrickO That's not the full picture though. Regardless of architecture, router SoCs tend to have older power-inefficient manufacturing nodes to keep costs down. It is a hint that they never advertise their latest routers to be using a 6nm process, because they aren't. I looked up one recent router SoC, the Broadcom BCM4908 which is ARMv8 and 64bit quad core and all that jazz. It took some googling to figure out that it is made with a 28nm process. Which is essentially 2012 vintage.
@@_PatrickO Except there can be a pretty huge difference in reliability between even a high end Wi-Fi router and using a wired router with access points.
PLEASE do a dedicated video on this. I would absolutely love a short and to the point how to video for setting this all up. Also, if you could lightly touch on the more thank likely added energy cost of running a full PC vs a small ARM based router that would be great.
I would love to put this to a hand-down project to learn metal-kernel construction. A lightweight microkernel and a decently powerful risc v will definitely work for one device at optimal speed.
If you're going to go this route by reusing an old PC, honestly one of the investments should be downgrading the PSU to something closer to the max draw compared to what it was using. Possibly a 500GB SSD downgrade from whatever was inside before as well.
@@Allurade Downgrading the PSU like that isn't going to really do anything. Electronic circuits don't draw power just because the power is there. They draw only the power they need in order to function. The only real purpose that downgrading the PSU will ultimately serve is powering your home-built router with a PSU that is less under-driven, which in some cases _can_ affect the energy efficiency of the PSU, but will at least put more strain on the PSU over time than if you'd just left the original higher-spec PSU in place.
In all my years, I didn't realize that I could build my own router like that. Always figured it used specialized parts that were rare/hard to get. Thanks for the info!
@@NoiseEverywhere In the end, it is generally pointless. Pfsense isn't going to do anything for the average person. The pc you use will be more expensive than a router and use more power. They should have just recommended the best bang for your buck wifi6 routers and called it a day. It feels like someone really wanted to make a pfsense video, but their info on normal routers is pretty dumb. Sure, the arm architecture used by most routers is 10 years old, but the x86 architecture in your PC is from 1985 and x64 is from 2003. The age of the architecture doesn't really matter. The chips in routers may use an architecture from 2011, but a wifi6 router will have a chip from 2018 or newer.
@@_PatrickO I agree 100%. In another comment I pointed out that this video is just a channel filler without real meaningful content. Maybe play around with the setup for learning experience if you have all required components laying around. Power use alone after a year make it worthwhile to invest in modern wifi router.
that optimal price/performance thing will have a shelf life of less than 24 hours in todays world. Its better to learn how to determine the best price/performance at any given moment so you can make the right choices for the exact moment you are buying things.
I get 20% more performance from my router than I’m supposed to get I have a 100/5 connection I get 120 down 6 up and my router does a lot of the things he was talking about basically just don’t buy cheap router and you’ll be fine stay away from linksys they suck go Netgear there the best routers on the market imo and you can add more ports with hubs if you need to lol I have 11 wired connection to my 4 port router I have an 8 port hub in my room for all my connected crap I hate gaming over and Wi-Fi hardwired is the way to go especially when your a TH-cam streamer, buy a good Netgear like the older nighthawk ac2600 it’s a great router was $180usd when I bought it my old router wouldn’t let me go over 25mbps it was a $29 Netgear that was 7 years old when I went from a 25/3 connection to my 100/5 connection I bought a new router like 3 days after I switched my plan I wish I had 20mbps *( maybe in a year or two I’ll be able to get more upload so I can at least do 1080p30 streams )* up so I could stream at 1080p60 or 4k30 right now best o can do is 720p30
The x86 PC you use for this DiY project will likely be a power usage pig compared to a retail router. I used a Raspberry Pi as a router for a bit, and that worked fine.
Higher power usage is a valid concern, but not necessarily a pig... My pfsense box is running a Pentium G6400 and I see about 10W at the wall. That's a lot more then a typical consumer router, sure... But that's not excessive. And the last time I restarted pfsense, my uptime was 191 days. The reliability and QoS that actually works is more than worth the extra $1 in electricity.
As others noted, it will use more power, but not necessarily a huge or noticeable amount more. Whether or not it is worth it will depend on your needs and wants. For me, it's well worth running an old AM3 board to have a flawless router that has never needed a restart in the 3 years I've been running it. It's especially unnoticeable next to the Unraid server that does take a huge amount of power.
Also, on the box I ended up with (an embedded intel pre-built industrial PC) it ended up being more stable. pfSense/OPNSense were easier to configure what I wanted to do but would randomly just lock up and drop connection for a few ms which would suddenly result in a giant lag spike. OpenWRT has been treating me well for almost 2 years now.
I found it very suspicious that OpenWRT was left out of this entire video while Sophos-NG & OPNsense were suggested. Most people I know would use OpenWRT/PfSense for this job.
Toms' video tutorials are 2nd to none. Lawrence Systems tutorials have given me the confidence to deploy PFSense and Truenas commercially within my business. Go and subscribe!
So you guys did a video on turning your old PC into a server, and now one on turning it into a router. Would it be possible to run both, one within a VM, and run both off the same CPU? If it was a more powerful CPU like an older i5 or i7
Yes, but a router OS will consume far less power than a full blown Windows/macOS install. And most used modern Dell Optiplex's on ebay are pretty power efficient these days even under the stress of Windows. With pfsense that will drop substantially too. BUT running an old PC 24/7 would still eventually fail, but also this video isn't exactly a permanent thing. Once you learn and realize how seperating routing, switching, and WiFi works, you'll probably buy proper equipment or a PC that can run low power for extended periods of times.
@@madezra64 cpu is not the main source of power consumption on most modern PCs. Running a more efficient OS will reduce CPU use and power consumption, but won't do much about the power consumption of the remaining components in the system.
@@c128stuff What other components? You remove the GPU in these builds for starters. That alone plus the router OS on bare-metal is gonna substantially reduce power consumption. And in fact, many Dell workstations that most small businesses and consumers purchase also use low voltage memory. You can remove the disk drive and swap out the HDD for a small SSD that uses little power and you'll be doing real good. Will it be as low as a shitty consumer router? Of course not, but you'll still be using drastically less power. Add on top of that you can undervolt and underclock your CPU in these situations too if you really wanna be frugal. Like I said, it aint a few watts like a consumer router, but 15 watts is pretty damn low and will basically cost you like a dollar extra to run opposed to the router, and that's under load lol
It's important to remember that many network cards don't like being used in this way. Realtek is one of the worst. Do your own research here, but most Intel nics will work great.
I don't understand these warnings about Realtek cards, I have built a pfsense system like this 2 years ago running 3 different realtek NICs and I have never had any issues during all this time.
@@Lothyde Non-intel nics have compatibility issues. Have for years. This is a widely known issue and realtek is one of the main ones due to how popular they are for consumer grade hardware. The main reason is that much of the hardware tested is enterprise level. I have a 1u server and a cisco switch in my home that runs most of my networking and home service needs. It has intel nics because intel is a huge supplier in that market. Realtek nics will usually work, most of the time. But, if you are building a system to replace your router do you really want to risk it? I want the most tested and verified parts, myself.
For my understanding you're missing the "fourth" important part of an all-in-1router: The modem, which translates the DSL-Signal into an Ethernet-signal, which then can be routed to you internal network. At least in Europe (when using DSL) you need this...So you need one as well when putting together your DIY-stuff.
In the USA, for me they've always been separate devices. When we had DSL, the ISP only leased a modem and expected you to plug the desktop directly into the modem, but that's far from a good solution so we bought a router. Same with my friend's VDSL and now fiber, as well as all my friends who had cable modems. Because the coaxial cable can only run so long, my modem is stuck near the wall opposite from all the devices where placing a router would be useless. Having a separate router means I can run it to the best location, which may be a contributor to splitting the function.
@Jordan Rouse With how prone ISP equipment is to failing, having it all in one place must have been awful! How far back is this? I went to the library for internet before 2010-ish, but I do remember PCI modem cards. I think my stepfather might have had one in his desktop back in 2003 because it was the only device with internet.
Naw, maybe in your part of Europe, but at least over here DSL routers are their own specialist thing and hardly a default. There's plenty of home routers in Europe aimed at typical consumers by electronics shops that are just the router+switch+AP combo. Though you may often see combo routers with modems at the ISP-managed edge of your network, but I personally would recommend treating any connection to its ports as a WAN in regards to the bits of the network you have actual full control over (namely, connect your "real" router to it) and building things from there.
Ironically here in third world rural south India our modem has long been an optical fiber one (for almost a decade now?) I don't see many integrated optical modem-routers in the market like there are DSL modem-router combos. We always had the 3 in one DSL routers earlier, now the modem is separate. Most people here still get the most basic 150mbps N routers even though fiber plan speeds are already past 100mbps (ISPs claim so at least) and are limited by the fast ethernet ports on everything.
I recently did a DIY router setup and it's awesome. Raspberry Pi 4 + my old router running as an AP (both running OpenWrt) + Unifi AP. So much faster and more reliable than before, and so many options
I have turned one of my old PCs into a router about a year ago and it is currently running adblock, intrusion detection and local VPN, so I can access my home network and NAS from anywhere. It's pretty cool definitely recommend others to give it a try. Also learned a bunch of stuff of how networks work.
Haven't noticed you mentioning anything about power consumption or device size. Routers usually consume 1-5W/h, while old PCs consume about 150-200W/h and require active cooling. Also, there is a size difference to consider.
Yeah, power consumption, the size/space to fit everything and the amount of power outlets: the router the ISP provides, the PC, the switch, the Access Point. AND the mess the wires make. I think it is a nice project to tinker with, but it maybe be a pain in the butt to actually use it. What about troubleshooting? Four devices instead of one. Oh man.
there are so small an power savy models just for somthing like this. just look at ally or others, there you can have a intel celeron or atom cpu with 2-6 nic's on a small "pc" for maybe 150 bucks. so no one say you should use your old highend hardware. this small things take maybe 10 watts or somthing, and if 5-10w more is not worth it for you, then dont do it. there are enoug peopel out who use dell poweredge r210-230 just to use pf/opensense on them.
An embedded generic device such as APU2, Protectli or Qotom device does not consume much more power than a traditional router. Of course, if you decide to saturate the CPU with encryption tasks such as VPN, then yes, they will consume more electricity. I agree that the size is an issue if you don't have a closet to put your router in.
@@avert_bs is just a example for low power and easy to use Systems. Its not just the router itsel pf/opensense can do so much more. If you have gibabit inet, you cant take a celeron, but for lower speed, it works easy.
I literally was reading this hackaday article a week ago lol I still love the one network Chuck made with a raspberry Pi and two USB Wi-Fi antennas. Like he said it makes a perfect travel router with built-in VPN that you can set up in seconds wherever you go knowing that you have nothing to worry about using a public Wi-Fi
Can we get a group of these videos and get Linus to attempt them? Watching him use Linux for his desktop replacement was like my boomer mom trying to print a document. Ineffective but highly entertaining. 😅
Nitpick from a networking professional at 3:13 - switching and bridging is not the same. It even says so in the highlighted text. A super short explanation would be: bridging means incoming traffic from one port is sent to all others. Switching means incoming traffic on one port is only sent to the port where the destination is. Bridging would congest the network card like immediately especially during high bandwidth traffic situations like network file transfer or streaming.
PfSense has been pretty amazing at handling everything, I have it within a VM that can and has handled 10gbps routing, possibly up to 40gbps but no ISP offers anything close to that.
10 gbps lol. Around here, no ISP offers anything close to 1gbps. People hover at around 200 mbps (and measley 35 up) and feel like it couldn't be any better. Hell, there are even new installations being done still with only 100mbps DSL!
@@AsekiBekovy I mean I had a unique situation where there's all the positives from a Monopoly, cheap infrastructure and large collection of people combined with contractually required connection maximums. They also had 2 40gb trunks to NTT and were their own equipment/manufacturer provider for most of their back end except the last 100 feet.
@@Oyashiro_Chama Nice one, we have the exact opposite. A complete primary school with a couple of switches, 45 PCs and a controlled WiFi environment, 3 subnets. All connected to town hall via VPN. But the local DSL only has 30 mbps of upstream.
I used to run a DIY router back in the early dial-up DSL days here in Germany, but ever since I came across the first AVM Fritz!Box I never went back. These things are an absolute godsend. For the SoHo-environment at least. And for a German cable connection there aren't any real alternatives either. Also, even though I'm an actual IT-Guy, I'm just getting too old and lazy for this $h!t...
Which fritz are you running? Also got another question that I've never seen an answer for: say if you have two 7490's, is the Fritz mesh between them real mesh? Or is the second AP really just acting as a repeater?
lol german internet is pretty bad... in 2019 it was the worst in Europe. I've been in germany last year and nothing changed. mobile net is a joke as well
avm did fine for a long time, but now they are acting up. 7510 is a mess without gig lan and 5 ghz, 4060 even more with 2.5gb wan but not lan, and the new 7590ax is missing isdn. If they continue that way, they will soon vanish into nonexistence
@@johnsonjamie1555 It got already a lot better, in cities at least. We can get 1GBit over cable and 5G is also nice if you can afford it. But yes our government is not good at these things, at least at the past, I hope the new one does a better job. The main party is on the opposition and not leading anymore, but we have 3 partys now that take care of not finding a solution together that is acceptable for the public, but hey it could be worse.
@@AsekiBekovy pretty sure ISDN isn't there anymore since it is getting out of fashion, our provider for example want more money if you want that option for your landline.
This is a plan of mine whenever I can finally get a job. Redo the entire networking for the house, with a single network (stuck with 2 routers that don't play nice to each other, so upstairs and downstairs are their own wifi networks- one of them doesn't support the ability to just automagically switch over)
We definitely need an Anthony/Linus collab video for this. Anthony has an absolutely astonishing amount of technical know-how and is great at presenting those details, and there’s just something about the enthusiastic and “easy to understand” presentation style from Linus. Together, they make some of my favorite videos on the LTT channel when technical detail and fun DIY vibes are the focus.
Been using my own firewall for 15+ years. Actually thinking of moving to a more power efficient system. Relatively modern ARM are more than powerfull enough for most home routers.
I installed pfSense on an HP Thinclient T520, installed a network adapter using the mPCIe port on the motherboard, cut the bottom of the case out since the wire needed a place to come out and just mounted it to the case itself. It's been going for almost 2 years 24/7. Very low power system and never had any issues with it!
Count me in. I've been building custom firmware images with OpenWRT since 2013. It runs on any CPU, makes networking easier, and the community is quite friendly. BSD is robust, as long as you know what you are doing. Linux is more friendly to novice users. I get the impression LTT are using mainly pfSense when it comes to networking. There are routers with powerful ARM CPUs. Mine can do 100Mbit/s encrypted VPN.
Linux is more power efficient but FreeBSD traditionally (don't know if its still the case) has faster networking so is preferred for a router. I ran Linux as a router from Slackware (on dialup when NAT was still experimental) up to OpenWRT on consumer routers, then on x86. When I switched to pfSense, web pages seemed to load faster, though I couldn't objectively measure a difference.
@@alexatkin FreeBSD is faster when dealing with low level networking, meaning layers 1 and 2 of ISO/OSI (ICS 35.100); while linux has superior performance when dealing with layers 3 and 4 (IPv4/v6 and TCP); usually high performance routers, firewalls and access points use linux while BSD based systems are reserved for network cards, switches and modems, but do consider that the main reason large companies use FreeBSD is actually licensing as it allows them to create a fully proprietary kernel and OS.
@@project5799 yes, hence all NAS based solutions on FreeBSD or some BSD system, also not being much different than linux cuz being unix based makes easier for ppl who know commands, directory struct, perms, etc to shift over ez
I prefer to just buy good quality flexible versions of each part. Modem, Router, Switch and Access point. Leaving an old PC running 24/7 just doesn't feel like such a good idea to me.
A router operating system is generally incredibly lightweight and uses far less power than your average full blown Linux DE/Windows/macOS install. Also this is more for people looking to get off of the shitty combo unit and try something better. Obviously us network savvy guys will buy quality versions of each piece, but modern workstations are quite the power houses in this day and age. You can pick up a fairly modern Dell Optiplex on ebay for a few hundred bucks that will make an incredible router. In fact pfSense has more features available than even most business grade dedicated routers. I love my Dream Machine Pro, but pfsense still wins at the end of the day in its feature set.
@@tilgare Unless your PC has an ARM/RISC based CPU, it is not the same. x86/CISC architecture is much more power hungry than whatever's in a router so it will consume significantly more power and will dissipate more heat to do similar tasks. Using a PC as a router also implies that it will do more than that(like hosting local services, acting as a NAS etc.) otherwise you are better off using an off the shelf solution when it comes to power efficiency.
@@LAndrewsChannel Yes for power consumption, it's obviously a hog. But for safety, that is not a factor. And yeah, using it as the NAS would be an excellent use case.
@@madezra64 If I really wanted pfSense I'd use one of the little netgate boxes. But my EdgeRouter X works okay as my dual stack router (3 LANs) and wireguard VPN server.
I partially agree. Only partially because I thought I was a part of the "most people" category. It turns out that I have so much throughput in my house that I overwhelmed both my ISP-provided router AND the Netgate ARM pfsense box I purchased to replace it. I'm repurposing an old gaming machine to be my next router to handle my household's throughput. Those two routers, regardless of software, had just low-end hardware they would be pegged at 100% and I'd notice serious issues, particularly with full state tables preventing new connections and ultimately crashing the router. It's worth considering if you're a power user at least.
@@cybersteel8 your old gaming machine will definitely use exponentially more power than your router does right now. Especially if you intend to have 24x7 internet access in your home.
I've had an ISP-supplied router before that will just occasionally crash and reboot when I play a network-intensive game. So I think the audience is larger than you might suppose.
@@jesseinfinite Everywhere I've had to pay the power bill has had cheap hydroelectric power. Guess I've been lucky, because the power consumption argument means very little to me.
I watched this video when it first came out, now I have 2 proxmox setups, with pfsenes, truenas, and everthing else I could want. What a rabbit hole this turned in to. Thanks!!!! Riley.
I can't believe you guys managed to make something like this, which seems so complex, fit into a Techquickie. I truly appreciate what you guys do here.
As someone who has spent most of the last 10 years working on enterprise hardware: I wish I could afford some of the dedicated solutions I've worked with. Nothing like having a dedicated fiber modem, dedicated router, dedicated switches and dedicated wireless access points. The only data center I've worked at that only ever had scheduled downtime was the only data center that had all single purpose dedicated hardware. Sure that made the scheduled downtime take longer, but resulted in longer overall uptime.
@@ValerieFire Currently, nothing. I am now a stay at home dad. But before my son was born last year, I was an independent IT contractor, network administrator, and custom hardware supplier DBA FAllen Computer Solutions.
Do you know about TekLager? The hardware they make is a bit expensive for consumer use but dirt cheap for enterprise and it is insane how well it performs.
You can easily run a small business (say a few dozen employees) on off-the-shelf hardware with pfSense etc. One of my clients is doing exactly that, with branches between different cities connected via a VPN between a pfSense box at each branch.
I'm using a Juniper SRX300 as my home router, which I bought used on ebay. You can get used enterprise hardware at reasonable price, and for home purposes, they are usually reliable enough.
My pfsense box runs on one xenon core and one gig of ddr3 ram. Absolutely plenty for my gigabit net. 2+ cores and 4G of ram have absolutely no use-case for a small router. Its like having a car to go to your local shop a block away. I mean a car with 4 wheel drive, 800HP, slick tyres, maybe NOS.
@@paulvorderegger1522 of course there are, but that wasn't the point of the video, nor my comment. What you are saying is using the above described car to do racing. For that, it's fine.
I've been running OPNSense for 2-3 years now, initially on a Dell SFF box with a i5-4590 and 8GB of RAM; currently, I have it on a "refreshed" mini-ITX build with the i5 and RAM scavenged from said Dell (screw Dell proprietary mobos and fans!) with a dual-port 2.5G NIC. I prefer bare metal, but IIRC it can be done on Proxmox or unRAID as well in docker containers.
Agreed. I have it in proxmox on amd and no issues. Previously ran on proxmox in an old refurb dell. Neither had problems, only upgraded to be able to run more VMs. Also, my opnsense gets frequent security updates which on many commercial routers is questionable.
I've been running Untangle on an old 2500k for several years now and can confirm it's good stuff. However one thing that it's not mentioned in the video is how, well, a normal router will use just a fraction of the power needed for a computer.
Ha, this is exactly what I did a few years ago when I wanted to upgrade from my AirPort Extreme. Love pfSense. Installed it on a little Protectli box with a 7100U, attached a couple of TP-Link APs, and haven't had a single issue since. The whole system has literally only been rebooted for firmware updates - it's awesome.
Another good OS option I'd say is Vyos I'd say. Its Linux based rather than *BSD, so for those not familiar with *BSD but are with Linux, it might be an easier choice. It doesn't come with a GUI though.
Have used VyOS before, virtualized and it works reall well. Not sure about its hardware compatability, or features as i used it in a home lab sense for some network infrastructure demos during one of the UKs many lockdowns. in addition it doesnt have a built in web interface, but as you said earlier its basically a linux distro, and im sure there are ones out there you can simply install(remembered vycontrol, but not really sure how well that works).plus the configuration is vaguely reminicent of the cisco style of doing things, and that really gets me going.
0:25 You forgot the “modem” part which handles communication over that Internet port, and connecting to your ISP with your account credentials. The “router” really sits on top of all of them, “routing” data between all the three kinds of physical connection.
@@undead890 Generally you cant just plug in a new modem anyway. The ISP's node will ignore it until you call them to authorize it under your billing account, if they even let you. Without that, anyone could just stick a modem on the coax line and get free internet.
@@thegamerguy56 That varies by ISP and country quite a lot actually. For example in the UK most DSL based ISPs you can use any modem you like, a few prefer their own but if you try hard enough you can replace those too. Now cable or FTTP, you are locked to the ISPs modem. In the US it seems kinda reversed. You can buy your own modem on Cable but not on DSL. Some countries/ISPs even let you replace your FTTP ONT (modem) by having using a SFP ONT, but that's very niche though hopefully will become more commonplace going forward as it would make building your own router with built-in ONT possible. These things are discussed a lot on the LTT forums.
@@shred1894 The modem is part of the ONT (optical network terminator) installed by your ISP. The one I use has four connectors: 1. to a wall wart power supply 2. the ISP fiber 3. an Ethernet jack at 10Gb/s and 4. a POTS (plain old telephone system) port as unlimited phone service is part of the package.
Unless you're getting power for free, I wouldn't use a desktop or even laptop for this purpose. One nice thing about commodity routers is that they sip power & will run for quite a while even on a low end UPS.
One thing I will say, as someone who used to work as tech support for an ISP, is that one should take the time to get fully comfortable with PFSense before committing to switch over in lieu of a standard router. The amount of times I had customers call who had little to no idea how to do even simple things on the PFSense they installed (or, even worse, their tech savvy friend/family member installed for them), complaining of slow speeds or routing issues, or packet loss, or high pings, or intermittent dropping (especially on DSL), is just frightening. And unless you hit the jackpot, there's basically zero chance that the tech support you get on the line will be able to help beyond making sure everything works plugged direct to the modem and sending you on your way to figure the rest out yourself, even if you are lucky enough to be with an ISP that is willing to support issues within the Local Network (mine initially didn't but shifted towards doing so a year or so before I left). The standard branded routers are all encountered commonly enough that most ISPs will either have emulators or guides for them, but PFSense, to many ISP tech support agents, may as well be a totally different language. I know it should be common sense to make an effort to understand something that important before using it as the lynchpin of your internet access, but, unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who don't make that effort and then find themselves lost as soon as things go anything but smoothly.
I agree. ISPs are providing routers with very simple features and simple interface because the do not want to support the users with complex configurations. Sometimes, they take a brand name router and rebrand it with their logo and their own firmware that has even less features than the original one, just for limiting the error potential from the users and reducing the call volume in their call centers.
@@viaujoc yeah, I actually worked with our R&D team to develop custom firmware for our DSL modem/router combos that would let us set up the customer's login and Wi-Fi to go "reset" to presets based on the customer's choice when ordering the service (or getting a new modem) when factory resetting the modem, for the customers with less technical knowledge. It was especially useful because we were a third party and the first party install techs liked to factory reset people's modems after completing the install. That being said, even with Cable internet, where we mostly used modem-only devices, with customers providing their own routers, we eventually started helping troubleshoot those as well, and aside from the occasional knucklehead that decided to buy a $10 special from one foreign market or another (our biggest customer base was in Toronto, so lots of different cultures going to stores or markets within their community and getting something that was made there), the worst to work with were people with DIY routers. Part of the problem was people not being very knowledgeable about the OS they used, but even worse were the people who refused to even try to troubleshoot because they believed the router they built couldn't possibly be the problem.
@@R0D3R1CKV10L3NC3 I totally agree. I also worked for an ISP tech support here in Quebec many years ago and I hated taking a call from a DIY wannabe who was blaming the modem the ISP and everything else but the device that they built.
Nah, the most OEM routers actually are 4 devices nowadays. You forgot the modem. I have tried self build routers from different embedded and full sized x86 for many years now - it always was total crap! Even when using Intel enterprise network adapters these systems all had way higher packet loss and where much less reliable than a standard OEM router, despite the high theoretical throughput! And hostap NEVER ran even closely as stable as an access point, as any cheap OEM-router did by default. Also they eat a LOT of power, and electricity costs you an arm and a leg here in Europe now. The best experiences I had with routers that I flashed custom firmware on, especially Tomato (or now: FreshTomato).
Actually, they are 5 devices. People tend to forget the "services" such as DHCP, DNS, NTP, VPN, printer sharing, etc. Those services can be installed on a separate device to reduce the router exposure to vulnerabilities. But this can get tedious and it is just easier to keep them on the router.
@@viaujoc It's right that VPN and other services can be installed on dedicated servers or implented using specific hardware. VPN can really be a reason for running on dedicated hardware, because of the encryption needing a lot of performance or specialised hardware acceleration. But as VPNs still are rather exotic in private use, I didn't count this anyway. The other things like SMB, DHCP, DNS, FTP, UPnP, WINS WebServer, WoL, AdBlock and whatever ... well, I assume 99% of people don't even know their home-"router" is supporting these ;)
Ha! Years ago, before consumer routers (and WiFi!) were available, I was buying old PCs from university labs, kitting them with a couple NICs, installing FreeBSD and selling them for home router/firewall systems. Everything old is new again. That said, modern routers are never CPU constrained as described and they use way less power than a PC. Don’t do this.
OpenWRT is also a lightweight and feature-full OS. It's based on Linux and supports things like Docker containers, so you can add plently of services that can't be used in a router by default (or it's kinda messy to get it working instead of running in a container)
I've been doing this for over a decade now. Very easy to see everything going on with the network and keeps the router from the ISP from being overwhelmed.
Outside of a medium sized business, you're never going to need the power of a full-blown pc for your routing. Unless you already have an old pc, you're better off with anything in openwrt's recommended routers section; cheaper, lower power and less work to maintain. When your existing router is failing you, it's normally due to specific parts being cheaped out on to meet low price points, causing bufferbloat and other similar problems rather that the concept of a low power soc being a poor.
Torrenting can absolutely fry older garbage routers. Ask me how I know. Our pfsense box with an 8 core atom can saturate gigabit with it and not really break a sweat.
It's got so many advantages in my opinion. I've been using my own for ~3 years now. Only equipment from my ISP left are the TV boxes. Running an old (5~y) supermicro thing, iirc it's a low powered xeon with 16gb memory. Got Vyos as it's OS, mainly because I'm familiar with Linux and not with *BSD. Sweet advantage of it is that I run my DNS server and such on it too, everything in one box.
Would absolutely be interested in a full LTT video on how to do this. Need info on reliability and issues that may occur. I know Comcast won't help you at all with connection problems unless you use their expensive hardware.
As a self-taught "tech", you have inspired me to stretch my talents...I am more than willing [and soon ready] to build my OWN router! I will keep my results in the family -- I have two brothers who are also "techs".
Getting your isp to bridge their network device is the hardest step in the process. Most require a business level service and won't bridge consumer service. Bridging passes the public ip address to the network instead of NATting it to a private ip address and using dhcp to assign addresses.
@@deViant14 I think he means making a router PC with only one NIC. If it's a trunk/tagged port, it can act as if it was connected to all of the VLANs separately through virtual network interfaces.
@@zacharysandberg so if I setup a VLAN connected to WAN and pfsense on the NIC passed through from my proxmox and another VLAN connected there and to my LAN computers that would work?
That's why I love my AVM Fritz!box. Those Routers are extremely good, have a lot of great features and aren't in any means underpowered for a reasonable price.
Switching to a dedicated coax modem and small business firewall/router along with a dedicated small business AP was the best network upgrade I've made.
One term: Energy Consumption Prices exploded over here, with 0.40€ per kilowatt being the current norm. So no, i will not let a full blown computer run as a router.
@@zacharysandberg i have a Pi4 with a 2 TB HDD attached doing several duties. Runs at ~10 Watt. Much more suitable to German energy prices at the moment.
In Quebec and British Columbia (Canada) where LTT is, electricity cost around 0.10$-0.15$CAN per kWh. So the cost of power here is not a big factor. At 0.15$ per kWh, each watt of power consumption on a device running 24/7 costs 1.31$ per year. I can imagine that this can become a more serious concern at 0.40 Euro per kWh. Quebec and BC have cold weather and cheap electricity, a perfect combinaison for cost effective datacenters!
You can also use any device with only one NIC (ethernet port) and configurre the router as one armed router (aka router on a stick) with VLANs and a managed switch. my set up is exactly as that.
@@Tish0eX It's a really awkward way to do it but ultimately you need a switch that supports VLANs. It's just way easier to do it with two ports and not over-engineer something.
@@Tish0eX you basically use VLAN tagging to route your traffic around. The Wan, pfsense and Lan connected to the same managed switch that tag the ports accordingly
very nice video, I'm sad that you didn't mention openwrt as I think it's better if you use something like a pi due to better arm support and stuff like that but everything else was very nice,I enjoy
I'm a fan of Gargoyle (based on OpenWRT) for traffic shaping and family filtering. After the old Netgear died, I've got it running on a NUC-like computer and it's smooth as butter.
Buy a cheap-ish router and install OpenWRT (w/ adblock and SQM). I used it to replace my 100mbit ISP router. And it will do a couple of 4k Netflix streams on WiFi with no sweat.
Just like a NAS: you can build one, and it will be more powerful than an off the shelf device, but the off the shelf one will be plug and play, and the built one will require some ironing out the bugs
"...will run circles around your old router, and will be a hack of al lot more reliable, and nicer to look at...." "AND consume a lot of more power 24/7". I would argue that for most people a router (maybe not the ISP one, but a better after market one) is the better choice. If you like to tinker around and don't care about downtimes because you missconfigured something than obviously building your own is a viable option 🙂
Well if you already run a file server / any server 24/7 then it's no brainier to just spin up a pfSense VM. Otherwise you'll be probably better getting a pre-build ARM pfSense device. But honestly you only need it if you have a lot of traffic on your network (like me, I have 4500+ open connections) because consumer routers can't handle so much traffic or you need some advanced feature.
I agree, use the ISP router for the modem and attach a mid range modern wireless router, after some homework of course, and for most that will be much better. If you have your own servers etc... then it might be worth changing over but unless you enjoy tinkering I'd recommend a purpose built appliance or an enterprise grade wireless access point and router.
I did this about 6 months ago and wish I had done it earlier. There are a lot of things to learn but TH-cam is full of videos covering sophisticated builds for businesses but almost nothing for the simple at home basic couple of computers and some wireless devices. You could easily get a half dozen videos out of setup and config. There are so many options that assume the user is in a business or being dictated to use one package vs another. Still, I bought a solid brand, energy efficient office computer and PCIe 10G Network card from eBay and the money I saved over buying the traditional device was enough to still let me buy a 5 port TP-link 10GBase-T switch. It's faster than my internet service but I'm ready for the future today.
i use Untangle Firewall on their Z4 appliance from their site, works flawlessly. i used to just run the Untangle software on old PC's with two NIC's until they finally just died. Untangle worked amazingly on 2 different PC's with TP Link gigabit NIC's. i use 2 AP's and 1 router in AP mode for all things wireless, very rarely any hiccups . ill never go back to a conventional router again. the control, options and things you can learn with this sort of setup is a fun thing for me to do. just having the ability to connect to my house on the go via the VPN in Untangle is a huge resource. its nice when you need to get to your files while your away or for those times when you are on sketchy wireless and need the protection of your VPN back at home.
a really really long time ago, we had our own home router. it was a refurbished IBM PC with a NIC in there somehow that a family friend provided. Strangest contraption to date i think that i ever owned. Nowadays you have your overpriced ubiquity stuff and the spider mesh craziness. Those have never really caused a problem for me but the weak link has always been the *modem* that the ISP provided. I still have the black box ones and not the white tube looking thing. they won't issue me a white tube thing unless it can be shown i need it (like if they issued me a new modem for whatever reason, I'll just get another black box :( ) now if I can make my own modem....
Even though this is certainly a nice experiment for all IT oriented minds, I'd still never recommend anyone to go this route. Rather just get a 65 euro Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X or pretty much anything else from Ubiquiti or MikroTik. Building your own is definitely not more "stable" or "long lasting." You will end up maintaining it like any other computer. And you're double screwed when your old computer as a router breaks. Just don't do it.
2 ปีที่แล้ว
Recently moved from a TP-Link router to a MikroTik one, and even though the UI is more expert focused, the basic setup was just a couple more clicks, then you have a working setup and can start experiment with changes gradually. eg. I needed hairpin-NAT which my TP-Link couldn't do; it was working after an hour having the router and searching for tutorials online. pfSense is cool though and I would like to give it a try eventually, maybe with the next Raspberry generation if it has better PCIe bandwidth for 10Gb cards.
Wrong! I have had my Build Your Own router running Untangled for years and it has required far less maintenance than any retail solution. It has many more options and the performance is outstanding. I built it for the very reasons outlined in this video and I have zero regrets.
It you're a computer illiterate, then indeed don't do this, because you will certainly drown in the setup of pfsense. waaaaay too many options and IT-"slang" that you simply don't understand. Let someone who knows this stuff set it up for you.
N00b tips - 1) use PFSense, it is secure by default EG everything is blocked and must be allowed. 2) Disable uPNP 3) Block all incoming connections that do not originate from the LAN (aka inside your network) 4) use a Layer3 (L3) smart switch as it can do some routing, which will save the actual router some overhead. 5) put all IoT and guest devices on a separate, firewalled vlan. 6) don't use WiFi routers which have not had firmware updates in the last 18-24m .
Setting up my opnsense edge server presently. Using a Dell 3040, upgraded to i7 6700, 16g ram, 128 ssd added a ngff to 2.5gbe card, 4x usb3 A to 2.5gbe adapters. It's OP to say the least. Nginx server, multiple vpn tunneling, intrusions detection, vlans galore. It's a rabbit hole for sure when you have the cpu power to use it all.
Mikrotik, Ubiquiti, and TP-Link offer low-cost “pro” network equipment and access points with nice UIs for configuration without having to build a random PC you need to maintain. (Mikrotik UI is harder to use but very powerful.)
well using an x86 desktop PC as a router would drive up the electricity bill exceptionally don't you think? I doubt it's worth it considering that adding extenders in a mesh is probably a more sustainable option
The one i built had 200W power supply, but the parts I used only uses 100W max. CPU use isn't much when routing only, so actually power consumption is probably 30-40W.
@@haoweishi5538 a typical router uses between 5W and 15W so a yearly use of 44 kWh - 132 kWh for a typical router compared to 263 kWh - 350 kWh for your DIY router even though I personally think you underestimate the power usage of your build because you only measure CPU and not the system as a whole?
@@madezra64 Yes they kind of exist. Look at Comcast Xfinity or Videotron Helix. They are not recorders but one box acts as the internet router, feeds TV terminals and provide home phone service. If the "gateway" (this is how they call the router) dies, then all your services are gone (internet, TV and phone line).
I am using a CM4 on a dual nic carrier board running OpenWRT and love it. It is plenty powerful and wasn't too expensive. I love having enterprise level control over my network.
Home routers are in fact 5-in-1 devices, even. Routers do masquerading for outgoing packages which is better suited to a real firewall. Then, there is switch, access point, DSL/cable modem and PBX (landline telephone). I did exactly that at home. For a little more cash you can buy a Supermicro board with up to 4 Intel NICs. I am using that as a hypervisor to host my firewall as well as my WLAN controller, smart home server and PBX server in one box. The hardest part is getting familiar with VLAN and bridging on Linux but once that's done, it's very easy to deploy new services or replace the existing ones. It's all perfectly modular.
It would be great to see a video on LTT channel comparing the performance of a DIY router you would build and a high end one that cost hundreds of dollars.
That’s incorrect. DIY router can only outperform in CPU intensive task such as using VPN client. However, it will never outperform in terms of throughput and latency. The hardware acceleration of even a cheap router will outperform most DIY router because DIY router is limited by the performance of CPU.
@@wojtek-33 Please don't talk about things you don't understand. Have you even tested a consumer grade router on IP performance tester properly in accordance with proper standard such as RFC2544? A poplular consumer grade router such as AC86U can have Agg Rx Tput around 1.488 Mpps, that's close to a commercial grade router. Try your DIY router, I guarantee you it will crash at much lower rate. Powerful CPUs are no use for high Mpps rate because that's not what they are designed to do, they can hardly forward few thousand packs at a time. Any consumer router can beat CPU bound router if you don't use it for CPU intensive task such as VPN.
@@wojtek-33 Routers regardless whether they are consumer or commercial use low powered CPU, small RAM and small storage because these are unreleated to network performance. Unless you want to use additional feature such as VPN, NAS etc on a router (and you shouldn't), CPU/RAM/Storage are not useful at all for high performance network device.
@@wojtek-33 You clearly never even touched a IP tester. Have you even tried putting any CPU bound router on IP tester? 64 frame size can go up 2 Mpps for i7, most CPU can only have around 100-200kpps. Please tell me how your c3558 can beat AC86U. Show me the test result.
A few things that could have been added to this video are how important it is to use a PC that is preferiblly small form factor and low power and also list the many other OS options that are avaialable for creating your own web appliance (pc based router). I have been running old PCs as web appliances for the better part of 2 decades at this point and have never looked back. If you are creative with some of the other OS options you can also add a lot of other functionality to the same machine without having a ton of other stuff plugged in.
@@MaxC_1 The only issues with using a Pi4 are that you have to add a second ethernet port that isn't limited by the throughput of the Pi chipset and you quickly run into the same issues that many off the shelf routers have as far as max throughput, number of simultaneous connections, encrypted tunneling, and very limited system resources if you decide to do any real stateful packet inspection. If you can live within the limits of the Pi4 it can make a decent home router for many people.
@@kuhrd the port on Pi4 supports max 1Gbps so about 200MBps on a 5 port lanes say. Good enough for most networks Besides that if you want higher speeds I prefer a compute module+io board which has a PCIe Gen2x1 which allows over 3Gbps throughput using a PCIe to ethernet adapter and a switch
Back in the day, I used to build my own routers. I'd use an old PC, run a Linux distro on it (usually Red Hat -- this was back before they went Enterprise-only) and have both the Internet and a switch connected to the PC. Back then it was ISDN or maybe a T1 for the Internet, if I was doing the install at an office -- cable-modems definitely weren't a thing yet, at least not in my neck of the woods. DSL came along, and I still did my own router thing... And for a short while with a Cable Modem as well. But as soon as WiFi became a thing, I stopped doing it. Never occurred to me that an expensive aftermarket 3-in-one router/wifi/switch wasn't as good as my old DIY-router setup. I knew the ones provided by the cable company were crap, but I figured the more expensive ones were far better. And that the weekly required reboots were just par for the course. Maybe I'll have to give it a try again.
Best decision I did is turn my main router into an access point mode and have my Firewalla Purple as the main router/firewall. This doesn't only protect my network better but it's also makes it easier to manage coz of the phone app. 👍
Errr, a crucial part of those so called routers is also the modem functionality! Do your own modem, do your own router, do your own switch and do your own wifi. Now you're good to go! Also consider efficiency: ASICs built for routing and switching are not found on PCs, look for a designated router instead. A-AND: Separating networks is one nice and easy layer of security, go for it. But claiming devices were "protected", even if one subnet becomes compromised is quite a bold statement. At least VLANS should be recommended here and a pro tip would be to use network namespaces in Linux if using a PC for routing.
I run OPNsense on a Protectli FW2B small form factor PC myself. I demoted my AC-68U to just being a wireless access point and I've added a pair of switches (one near the other devices and one at the other end of the apartment so I only have to run one cable down the hall) to further reduce the strain on my aging wireless access point.
Ive used pfsense on PC Engines Alix mini PCs before. Works really well. The difficulty is the energy and space use of running a PC, with fans. Reliable, sure... but not without some maintenance. I'd also recommend Ubiquiti products for decent routers. The video imaged a Ubiquiti wireless access point, for example. This is the approach I take for most clients, as these commercial options are quite powerful as well.
I've used pfSense in the past, but ran into a lot of bugs and other oddities that caused me grief. I moved on to Untangle and while is not free (~$50 a year), it certainly is pretty powerful, dare I say even more powerful than pfSense even with the added packages.
Most people don't need a custom router for general home usage. I've considered going down this rabbit hole in the past. In the end, I settled for a TP Link Archer C6 along with a Raspberry Pi Zero running pi hole and DHCP server. Though it would have been fun running pfsense in a low power celeron board, I just did not want to add another PC in my maintenance job list. The setup I currently have works with 5 phones, one tab and two desktops just fine.
I built a router once with PFSense and whenever I would download games, movies, and etc my speeds were throttled. I just ended up buying a Unifi UDM Base and it has been great.
What was genius back in 2010's is old and clunky now. You can make a powerful router using an ARM CPU. One example is a Mikrotik hAP AC2 that I use at home. If you don't do any advanced networking even a basic MIPS CPU based router hacked with OpenWRT firmware will do wonders. An x86 PC will either be new and expensive or old and waste a lot of energy while mostly idling. Cost aside, I don't believe it would be reasonable for an amateur to go through all the hoops. This is really trying to go the hard way. This video is nice piece of trivia, some misinformation here and there, and then nothing more.
THIS! This is the comment I was trying to find. I've been using the same hAP AC2 to manage my entire home network consisting of 20+ devices and a 400 Mbps FTTH link, and it surely did not let me down so far. It's incredible how much horsepower such a small thing has, looking through its graphs you can see the CPU usage has never surpassed 25%. No need at all for such an extravagant solution as the one mentioned in the video. In fact, in the hands of an inexperienced user, a DIY solution can perform worse than your ISP or off-the-shelf router.
You forgot to mention OpenWRT which works on both x86/x64 and all kinds of stock routers. Even replacing stock router firmware (on supported ones) dramatically improves performance, stability and adds a whole bunch of new features.
Dont forget that the router (mostly) runs 24/7 so if you use your PC for router then the electrical bills might not be worth of squeezing bit of more speed out of your internet connection... The main mesaage here should be that you do not need all-in-one device but you can check whats on the market and maybe you will find that buying two or even three dedicated devices (router/firewall, wifi ap, switch) might do better job for you.
USB C powered notebook mainboards with M.2 storage (like Framework mainboards when they start aging and getting replaced by 13th gen Intel or AMD based boards) would be awesome for this. POE to USB C adapter so no extra power cord is needed if you have a POE switch, and another simple usb c to ethernet adapter, and good to go.
Current notebooks actually can run at about 6Watt idle. It's still a bit more than an OEM router, but in the range of acceptable. But many experiences with a lot of self built routers where absolutely terrible for other reasons! It's not worth, even worse than an OEM router.
@@elmariachi5133 if powerful routers were thousands of dollars then using a PC would be justified. But you can get a mikrotic router for less than 80 USD that can handle anything that you throw at it and have a beast of an OS.
@@mitakka Right, but a modern notebook can additionally be your power saving home server, which is very useful for a lot of people, including the capability of running VMs. I am actually planning on buying a used one at about 250€ with a broken screen, remove the standard casing and 3d print an enclosure with space (and the needed adapters/cables) for SATA drives, PCIe cards using an mPCIe adapter (for example for an 2nd LAN-port), better cooling and whatever. So, that's the appeal of x86 hardware .. but of course it doesn't run great, yet :(
Remember too, that off-the-shelf router operating systems have NSA backdoors built into them, that hackers have figured out how to use too. So using something else is a very good idea, to keep both the state and regular hackers from creeping around your network.
My best word of advice if buying a normal router is to ignore the first thing you generally see on the box. Always check to make sure it at least has gigabit Ethernet. A router than advertise wireless speeds of whatever it wants, but if it is only 10/100 Ethernet, you will never see internet speeds of more than 100 MBPS. Make sure it at least has gigabit. There is no reason to spend much on a router if it lacks gigabit Ethernet.
Turns out I've actually done this as I was just setting up a home network way back in the days of Windows 95. Turned my home-built computer into the home's server that hooked into my DSL connection (I signed up for DSL so fast when it was offered in my area that I was one of about 100 people that got the original PC card modems they offered). It was all wired back then, so some very long cables and a lot of switches.
![[#2024MAMA] BIGBANG (빅뱅) - 뱅뱅뱅 (BANG BANG BANG) + FANTASTIC BABY | Mnet 241123 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EQsYfiPR9uM/mqdefault.jpg)
Y'all should really do a video dedicated to "here's the stuff you can turn an older PC into" like this cause it feels like there's so many options that no one knows. I didn't even know this was possible.
Yes please do that. That would be so useful and interesting. I might finally find a use for my 3 laptops with Intel 2nd gen in them.
When I build my next pc I intend to turn my current one into network access storage. Would be great if LTT did more videos as it could reduce e-waste
If you use Linux the world is pretty much your oyster :)
@@Batyalas Do you have a NAS? If not, make one of those laptops into a NAS. It was relatively easy. Don't expect blazing fast speeds though.
God I would love this. I’ve already done the home server thing and a few other pet projects but stuff like this is my jam!
It helps to have a stack of old scrap pcs lying around
I never would have expected a router to be something an ordinary person could make. Cool
@Britney 8 wtf is this I see spams like this on every second video I watch on yt
For home or small business sure, anything more than that and you’ll be needing specialist hardware. A cpu can handle a fair bit of traffic but quickly overwhelmed - this is where companies like Cisco come in, developing ASICs to absolutely annihilate packet processing.
I built my own Pfsense router last year and its super easy.
Yeah it is I run untangle on a old core 2 duo with a wifi pci-e adapter and one 1gbps Network card never have issues since then
@@voidpointer398 ppl need to be using the YT Spammer Purge app Linus did a video on a while back...
The fact that Riley, who still uses the ISP provided router, is the presenter makes this so much better
as long as it is in bridged more who cares
He doesn't have a clue here and it shows. Whoever wrote this seemingly wanted to make a quick video on pfsense, but the info about regular routers is just stupid. Yes, they can vary between pure junk and good, but no average person needs to worry about creating a pc with pfsense which also uses more power to run 24/7. Just buy a good wifi router. LTT could have actually recommended some and it would have been much more helpful. There is nothing special about pfsense.
His info about routers using chips that are from 2012 is pure garbage. Someone likely confused the ARMv7-A architecture with the age of the chip itself. Sure, the architecture is from 2011, but the chips are much newer. Wifi6 routers use all in one SOCs that are processors and wifi radios on one chip. When buying one, the difference of 40 dollars in price can sometimes make a real difference, but sometimes more expensive isn't really going to benefit you much. All you need to do is select a good one and you are fine.
Everyone's desktop processors are using the x86 architecture from 1985 and the x64 architecture from 2003.
As an example, the TP-Link AX5400 router is perfectly fine. It isn't too ridiculously expensive considering how insane routers can go up to and it is even better than some higher priced ones. It uses a chip from 2019 that is an ARMv7-A processor and two wifi6 radios.
@@_PatrickO I run an RT-AX58U with asuswrt-merlin and it got all the options I need.
I could even install aditional packages if I wanted to.
That's why I 100% agree with you.
@@_PatrickO That's not the full picture though. Regardless of architecture, router SoCs tend to have older power-inefficient manufacturing nodes to keep costs down. It is a hint that they never advertise their latest routers to be using a 6nm process, because they aren't. I looked up one recent router SoC, the Broadcom BCM4908 which is ARMv8 and 64bit quad core and all that jazz. It took some googling to figure out that it is made with a 28nm process. Which is essentially 2012 vintage.
@@_PatrickO Except there can be a pretty huge difference in reliability between even a high end Wi-Fi router and using a wired router with access points.
PLEASE do a dedicated video on this. I would absolutely love a short and to the point how to video for setting this all up. Also, if you could lightly touch on the more thank likely added energy cost of running a full PC vs a small ARM based router that would be great.
I would love to put this to a hand-down project to learn metal-kernel construction. A lightweight microkernel and a decently powerful risc v will definitely work for one device at optimal speed.
Checkout Lawrencesystems' vids!
If you're going to go this route by reusing an old PC, honestly one of the investments should be downgrading the PSU to something closer to the max draw compared to what it was using. Possibly a 500GB SSD downgrade from whatever was inside before as well.
@@Allurade Downgrading the PSU like that isn't going to really do anything. Electronic circuits don't draw power just because the power is there. They draw only the power they need in order to function. The only real purpose that downgrading the PSU will ultimately serve is powering your home-built router with a PSU that is less under-driven, which in some cases _can_ affect the energy efficiency of the PSU, but will at least put more strain on the PSU over time than if you'd just left the original higher-spec PSU in place.
@@calyodelphi124 Exactly right, your best for a PSU, is one that doesn't exist i.e. is a super efficent but low wattage, my opnSense pc in total
In all my years, I didn't realize that I could build my own router like that. Always figured it used specialized parts that were rare/hard to get. Thanks for the info!
Fuck the ISPs! Make it yourself!
I would love an in-depth video on this. Including an optimal price-to-performance build and software setup.
TH-cam - Lawrence Systems
and power consumption comparison at least.
@@NoiseEverywhere In the end, it is generally pointless. Pfsense isn't going to do anything for the average person. The pc you use will be more expensive than a router and use more power.
They should have just recommended the best bang for your buck wifi6 routers and called it a day. It feels like someone really wanted to make a pfsense video, but their info on normal routers is pretty dumb. Sure, the arm architecture used by most routers is 10 years old, but the x86 architecture in your PC is from 1985 and x64 is from 2003. The age of the architecture doesn't really matter. The chips in routers may use an architecture from 2011, but a wifi6 router will have a chip from 2018 or newer.
@@_PatrickO I agree 100%. In another comment I pointed out that this video is just a channel filler without real meaningful content. Maybe play around with the setup for learning experience if you have all required components laying around. Power use alone after a year make it worthwhile to invest in modern wifi router.
that optimal price/performance thing will have a shelf life of less than 24 hours in todays world. Its better to learn how to determine the best price/performance at any given moment so you can make the right choices for the exact moment you are buying things.
It would be nice to know what the actual increased performance actually is
Well it can lower your ping even your little brother is downloading some weird stuff at 10 GB :)
yeah riley
@@mrwooomaker5606 I thought something like this might be the case. Thanks
I get 20% more performance from my router than I’m supposed to get I have a 100/5 connection I get 120 down 6 up and my router does a lot of the things he was talking about basically just don’t buy cheap router and you’ll be fine stay away from linksys they suck go Netgear there the best routers on the market imo and you can add more ports with hubs if you need to lol I have 11 wired connection to my 4 port router I have an 8 port hub in my room for all my connected crap I hate gaming over and Wi-Fi hardwired is the way to go especially when your a TH-cam streamer, buy a good Netgear like the older nighthawk ac2600 it’s a great router was $180usd when I bought it my old router wouldn’t let me go over 25mbps it was a $29 Netgear that was 7 years old when I went from a 25/3 connection to my 100/5 connection I bought a new router like 3 days after I switched my plan I wish I had 20mbps *( maybe in a year or two I’ll be able to get more upload so I can at least do 1080p30 streams )* up so I could stream at 1080p60 or 4k30 right now best o can do is 720p30
@@mrwooomaker5606 in the video he said only x64 cpu can be used, can i use x86?
The x86 PC you use for this DiY project will likely be a power usage pig compared to a retail router. I used a Raspberry Pi as a router for a bit, and that worked fine.
Higher power usage is a valid concern, but not necessarily a pig... My pfsense box is running a Pentium G6400 and I see about 10W at the wall. That's a lot more then a typical consumer router, sure... But that's not excessive. And the last time I restarted pfsense, my uptime was 191 days.
The reliability and QoS that actually works is more than worth the extra $1 in electricity.
Depends, I have a quad-core Celeron I use it uses like 30w... And does a gigabit easily.
@@KodiakWoodchuck correct. Same here.
As others noted, it will use more power, but not necessarily a huge or noticeable amount more. Whether or not it is worth it will depend on your needs and wants. For me, it's well worth running an old AM3 board to have a flawless router that has never needed a restart in the 3 years I've been running it. It's especially unnoticeable next to the Unraid server that does take a huge amount of power.
@@TheEvox81 Mikrotik and Ubiquiti do have good offerings if you don't have a spare computer.
There is also OpenWRT as a great alternative to pfsense. Since it uses Linux, it has greater hardware support.
Also, on the box I ended up with (an embedded intel pre-built industrial PC) it ended up being more stable. pfSense/OPNSense were easier to configure what I wanted to do but would randomly just lock up and drop connection for a few ms which would suddenly result in a giant lag spike. OpenWRT has been treating me well for almost 2 years now.
I found it very suspicious that OpenWRT was left out of this entire video while Sophos-NG & OPNsense were suggested. Most people I know would use OpenWRT/PfSense for this job.
@@drownthepoor Or even DD WRT for consumer network devices :)
OpenWRT and DD WRT have support built in for Pi-Hole right?
Yeah drawback from OpenWRT is that it's firewall isn't as good and opnsense/pfSense run 'hardenedBSD' which is more secure then linux
😀 Nice choice of tutorials on pfsense to reference.
Lawrence in the comments section!!!!! :)
Have used, would recommend :) 11/10, 6 stars, A+++
WAS SO HAPPY TO SEE YOU SLIDE IN THE DMS😃
Pfsense for the win.
Toms' video tutorials are 2nd to none. Lawrence Systems tutorials have given me the confidence to deploy PFSense and Truenas commercially within my business. Go and subscribe!
So you guys did a video on turning your old PC into a server, and now one on turning it into a router.
Would it be possible to run both, one within a VM, and run both off the same CPU? If it was a more powerful CPU like an older i5 or i7
Ooh boy that would be nice if possible, I'd also like to know about this
Yes, theoretically that can be done. As a Security Engineer, I would recommend against it.
Yes. Install proxmox and buy a PCI network card to pass through. TechnoTim and the tech / craft beer guy both have excellent tutorials on TH-cam.
Yes, and it's not that hard. I run a solution like this, with pfSense on a VM inside a VMware cluster.
Proxmox. You can spin pfsense (likely opnsense as well) up in a vm and pass through the NICs.
However, an old PC with several additional devices also consumes much more power than a purchased router does. And that thing runs 24h.
Yes, but a router OS will consume far less power than a full blown Windows/macOS install. And most used modern Dell Optiplex's on ebay are pretty power efficient these days even under the stress of Windows. With pfsense that will drop substantially too. BUT running an old PC 24/7 would still eventually fail, but also this video isn't exactly a permanent thing. Once you learn and realize how seperating routing, switching, and WiFi works, you'll probably buy proper equipment or a PC that can run low power for extended periods of times.
@@madezra64 cpu is not the main source of power consumption on most modern PCs. Running a more efficient OS will reduce CPU use and power consumption, but won't do much about the power consumption of the remaining components in the system.
@@c128stuff What other components? You remove the GPU in these builds for starters. That alone plus the router OS on bare-metal is gonna substantially reduce power consumption. And in fact, many Dell workstations that most small businesses and consumers purchase also use low voltage memory. You can remove the disk drive and swap out the HDD for a small SSD that uses little power and you'll be doing real good. Will it be as low as a shitty consumer router? Of course not, but you'll still be using drastically less power. Add on top of that you can undervolt and underclock your CPU in these situations too if you really wanna be frugal. Like I said, it aint a few watts like a consumer router, but 15 watts is pretty damn low and will basically cost you like a dollar extra to run opposed to the router, and that's under load lol
@@madezra64 what about a minibrick PC ? That things use Atom cpus right?
not if ur underage and your mom turns the router off sometimes.
It's important to remember that many network cards don't like being used in this way. Realtek is one of the worst. Do your own research here, but most Intel nics will work great.
Agreed, especially faster (gigabit+) cards
I don't understand these warnings about Realtek cards, I have built a pfsense system like this 2 years ago running 3 different realtek NICs and I have never had any issues during all this time.
also note that hardware acceleration exists and makes many routers way more efficient and pro gear can be way faster than their cpu would imply
oh my god Realtek drivers are nightmare fuel
@@Lothyde Non-intel nics have compatibility issues. Have for years. This is a widely known issue and realtek is one of the main ones due to how popular they are for consumer grade hardware. The main reason is that much of the hardware tested is enterprise level. I have a 1u server and a cisco switch in my home that runs most of my networking and home service needs. It has intel nics because intel is a huge supplier in that market. Realtek nics will usually work, most of the time. But, if you are building a system to replace your router do you really want to risk it? I want the most tested and verified parts, myself.
For my understanding you're missing the "fourth" important part of an all-in-1router: The modem, which translates the DSL-Signal into an Ethernet-signal, which then can be routed to you internal network. At least in Europe (when using DSL) you need this...So you need one as well when putting together your DIY-stuff.
In the USA, for me they've always been separate devices. When we had DSL, the ISP only leased a modem and expected you to plug the desktop directly into the modem, but that's far from a good solution so we bought a router. Same with my friend's VDSL and now fiber, as well as all my friends who had cable modems. Because the coaxial cable can only run so long, my modem is stuck near the wall opposite from all the devices where placing a router would be useless. Having a separate router means I can run it to the best location, which may be a contributor to splitting the function.
@Jordan Rouse With how prone ISP equipment is to failing, having it all in one place must have been awful! How far back is this? I went to the library for internet before 2010-ish, but I do remember PCI modem cards. I think my stepfather might have had one in his desktop back in 2003 because it was the only device with internet.
In my ISP in Canada provides a combo modem router device
Naw, maybe in your part of Europe, but at least over here DSL routers are their own specialist thing and hardly a default. There's plenty of home routers in Europe aimed at typical consumers by electronics shops that are just the router+switch+AP combo. Though you may often see combo routers with modems at the ISP-managed edge of your network, but I personally would recommend treating any connection to its ports as a WAN in regards to the bits of the network you have actual full control over (namely, connect your "real" router to it) and building things from there.
Ironically here in third world rural south India our modem has long been an optical fiber one (for almost a decade now?) I don't see many integrated optical modem-routers in the market like there are DSL modem-router combos. We always had the 3 in one DSL routers earlier, now the modem is separate. Most people here still get the most basic 150mbps N routers even though fiber plan speeds are already past 100mbps (ISPs claim so at least) and are limited by the fast ethernet ports on everything.
I recently did a DIY router setup and it's awesome. Raspberry Pi 4 + my old router running as an AP (both running OpenWrt) + Unifi AP. So much faster and more reliable than before, and so many options
how did you do this? I want to do this too
I have turned one of my old PCs into a router about a year ago and it is currently running adblock, intrusion detection and local VPN, so I can access my home network and NAS from anywhere. It's pretty cool definitely recommend others to give it a try. Also learned a bunch of stuff of how networks work.
That sounds really cool, what's your setup for your router? I might want to do something similar myself
@@rubiksfaq9214 It's a Pentium G2030 with 4GB RAM
Question here, do I actually need an Ethernet wifi card , what if I have a normal wifi card, and plug it in through the motherboard
I hope you're using a load balance dns with encryption both ends. Otherwise you're just opening ports on your router that shouldn't be open.
@@cake5000 I'm using openvpn
Haven't noticed you mentioning anything about power consumption or device size.
Routers usually consume 1-5W/h, while old PCs consume about 150-200W/h and require active cooling.
Also, there is a size difference to consider.
Yeah, power consumption, the size/space to fit everything and the amount of power outlets: the router the ISP provides, the PC, the switch, the Access Point. AND the mess the wires make. I think it is a nice project to tinker with, but it maybe be a pain in the butt to actually use it. What about troubleshooting? Four devices instead of one. Oh man.
there are so small an power savy models just for somthing like this. just look at ally or others, there you can have a intel celeron or atom cpu with 2-6 nic's on a small "pc" for maybe 150 bucks. so no one say you should use your old highend hardware. this small things take maybe 10 watts or somthing, and if 5-10w more is not worth it for you, then dont do it.
there are enoug peopel out who use dell poweredge r210-230 just to use pf/opensense on them.
An embedded generic device such as APU2, Protectli or Qotom device does not consume much more power than a traditional router. Of course, if you decide to saturate the CPU with encryption tasks such as VPN, then yes, they will consume more electricity.
I agree that the size is an issue if you don't have a closet to put your router in.
@@thescandalchannel if you're going as low as celeron, you might as well just buy a normal router
@@avert_bs is just a example for low power and easy to use Systems. Its not just the router itsel pf/opensense can do so much more.
If you have gibabit inet, you cant take a celeron, but for lower speed, it works easy.
I literally was reading this hackaday article a week ago lol
I still love the one network Chuck made with a raspberry Pi and two USB Wi-Fi antennas. Like he said it makes a perfect travel router with built-in VPN that you can set up in seconds wherever you go knowing that you have nothing to worry about using a public Wi-Fi
Can we get a group of these videos and get Linus to attempt them? Watching him use Linux for his desktop replacement was like my boomer mom trying to print a document. Ineffective but highly entertaining. 😅
Nitpick from a networking professional at 3:13 - switching and bridging is not the same. It even says so in the highlighted text. A super short explanation would be: bridging means incoming traffic from one port is sent to all others. Switching means incoming traffic on one port is only sent to the port where the destination is. Bridging would congest the network card like immediately especially during high bandwidth traffic situations like network file transfer or streaming.
PfSense has been pretty amazing at handling everything, I have it within a VM that can and has handled 10gbps routing, possibly up to 40gbps but no ISP offers anything close to that.
10 gbps lol. Around here, no ISP offers anything close to 1gbps. People hover at around 200 mbps (and measley 35 up) and feel like it couldn't be any better. Hell, there are even new installations being done still with only 100mbps DSL!
@@AsekiBekovy I mean I had a unique situation where there's all the positives from a Monopoly, cheap infrastructure and large collection of people combined with contractually required connection maximums.
They also had 2 40gb trunks to NTT and were their own equipment/manufacturer provider for most of their back end except the last 100 feet.
@@Oyashiro_Chama Nice one, we have the exact opposite. A complete primary school with a couple of switches, 45 PCs and a controlled WiFi environment, 3 subnets. All connected to town hall via VPN. But the local DSL only has 30 mbps of upstream.
10-40gbps on pfsense? It lacks VPP & probably eats up way more resources tha n tnsr for it.
You've added another eth port to your computer?
I used to run a DIY router back in the early dial-up DSL days here in Germany, but ever since I came across the first AVM Fritz!Box I never went back.
These things are an absolute godsend. For the SoHo-environment at least. And for a German cable connection there aren't any real alternatives either.
Also, even though I'm an actual IT-Guy, I'm just getting too old and lazy for this $h!t...
Which fritz are you running?
Also got another question that I've never seen an answer for: say if you have two 7490's, is the Fritz mesh between them real mesh? Or is the second AP really just acting as a repeater?
lol german internet is pretty bad... in 2019 it was the worst in Europe. I've been in germany last year and nothing changed. mobile net is a joke as well
avm did fine for a long time, but now they are acting up. 7510 is a mess without gig lan and 5 ghz, 4060 even more with 2.5gb wan but not lan, and the new 7590ax is missing isdn. If they continue that way, they will soon vanish into nonexistence
@@johnsonjamie1555 It got already a lot better, in cities at least. We can get 1GBit over cable and 5G is also nice if you can afford it. But yes our government is not good at these things, at least at the past, I hope the new one does a better job. The main party is on the opposition and not leading anymore, but we have 3 partys now that take care of not finding a solution together that is acceptable for the public, but hey it could be worse.
@@AsekiBekovy pretty sure ISDN isn't there anymore since it is getting out of fashion, our provider for example want more money if you want that option for your landline.
This is a plan of mine whenever I can finally get a job. Redo the entire networking for the house, with a single network (stuck with 2 routers that don't play nice to each other, so upstairs and downstairs are their own wifi networks- one of them doesn't support the ability to just automagically switch over)
Sounds awesome!
Good luck on finding the job!
I recommend getting some UniFi WAPs.
We definitely need an Anthony/Linus collab video for this. Anthony has an absolutely astonishing amount of technical know-how and is great at presenting those details, and there’s just something about the enthusiastic and “easy to understand” presentation style from Linus. Together, they make some of my favorite videos on the LTT channel when technical detail and fun DIY vibes are the focus.
Been using my own firewall for 15+ years. Actually thinking of moving to a more power efficient system. Relatively modern ARM are more than powerfull enough for most home routers.
I installed pfSense on an HP Thinclient T520, installed a network adapter using the mPCIe port on the motherboard, cut the bottom of the case out since the wire needed a place to come out and just mounted it to the case itself. It's been going for almost 2 years 24/7. Very low power system and never had any issues with it!
I'm surprised any linux alternative wasn't mentioned. Cuz rather than pfsense as os, i always use OpenWRT with pfsense package for management.
Count me in. I've been building custom firmware images with OpenWRT since 2013. It runs on any CPU, makes networking easier, and the community is quite friendly.
BSD is robust, as long as you know what you are doing. Linux is more friendly to novice users. I get the impression LTT are using mainly pfSense when it comes to networking.
There are routers with powerful ARM CPUs. Mine can do 100Mbit/s encrypted VPN.
How do you install the pfSense package on OpenWRT?
Linux is more power efficient but FreeBSD traditionally (don't know if its still the case) has faster networking so is preferred for a router.
I ran Linux as a router from Slackware (on dialup when NAT was still experimental) up to OpenWRT on consumer routers, then on x86. When I switched to pfSense, web pages seemed to load faster, though I couldn't objectively measure a difference.
@@alexatkin FreeBSD is faster when dealing with low level networking, meaning layers 1 and 2 of ISO/OSI (ICS 35.100); while linux has superior performance when dealing with layers 3 and 4 (IPv4/v6 and TCP); usually high performance routers, firewalls and access points use linux while BSD based systems are reserved for network cards, switches and modems, but do consider that the main reason large companies use FreeBSD is actually licensing as it allows them to create a fully proprietary kernel and OS.
@@project5799 yes, hence all NAS based solutions on FreeBSD or some BSD system, also not being much different than linux cuz being unix based makes easier for ppl who know commands, directory struct, perms, etc to shift over ez
I prefer to just buy good quality flexible versions of each part. Modem, Router, Switch and Access point. Leaving an old PC running 24/7 just doesn't feel like such a good idea to me.
It wouldn't be just any PC running, it would be running a router OS. No different from leaving your router at home now on 24/7.
A router operating system is generally incredibly lightweight and uses far less power than your average full blown Linux DE/Windows/macOS install. Also this is more for people looking to get off of the shitty combo unit and try something better. Obviously us network savvy guys will buy quality versions of each piece, but modern workstations are quite the power houses in this day and age. You can pick up a fairly modern Dell Optiplex on ebay for a few hundred bucks that will make an incredible router. In fact pfSense has more features available than even most business grade dedicated routers. I love my Dream Machine Pro, but pfsense still wins at the end of the day in its feature set.
@@tilgare Unless your PC has an ARM/RISC based CPU, it is not the same. x86/CISC architecture is much more power hungry than whatever's in a router so it will consume significantly more power and will dissipate more heat to do similar tasks. Using a PC as a router also implies that it will do more than that(like hosting local services, acting as a NAS etc.) otherwise you are better off using an off the shelf solution when it comes to power efficiency.
@@LAndrewsChannel Yes for power consumption, it's obviously a hog. But for safety, that is not a factor. And yeah, using it as the NAS would be an excellent use case.
@@madezra64 If I really wanted pfSense I'd use one of the little netgate boxes. But my EdgeRouter X works okay as my dual stack router (3 LANs) and wireguard VPN server.
While I'm all for people DIYing their network, I rather suspect that most people won't see any noticeable benefit from doing so.
I partially agree. Only partially because I thought I was a part of the "most people" category. It turns out that I have so much throughput in my house that I overwhelmed both my ISP-provided router AND the Netgate ARM pfsense box I purchased to replace it. I'm repurposing an old gaming machine to be my next router to handle my household's throughput. Those two routers, regardless of software, had just low-end hardware they would be pegged at 100% and I'd notice serious issues, particularly with full state tables preventing new connections and ultimately crashing the router.
It's worth considering if you're a power user at least.
@@cybersteel8 your old gaming machine will definitely use exponentially more power than your router does right now. Especially if you intend to have 24x7 internet access in your home.
@@jesseinfinite undervolting could help though
I've had an ISP-supplied router before that will just occasionally crash and reboot when I play a network-intensive game.
So I think the audience is larger than you might suppose.
@@jesseinfinite Everywhere I've had to pay the power bill has had cheap hydroelectric power. Guess I've been lucky, because the power consumption argument means very little to me.
I watched this video when it first came out, now I have 2 proxmox setups, with pfsenes, truenas, and everthing else I could want. What a rabbit hole this turned in to. Thanks!!!! Riley.
I can't believe you guys managed to make something like this, which seems so complex, fit into a Techquickie. I truly appreciate what you guys do here.
As someone who has spent most of the last 10 years working on enterprise hardware: I wish I could afford some of the dedicated solutions I've worked with.
Nothing like having a dedicated fiber modem, dedicated router, dedicated switches and dedicated wireless access points.
The only data center I've worked at that only ever had scheduled downtime was the only data center that had all single purpose dedicated hardware.
Sure that made the scheduled downtime take longer, but resulted in longer overall uptime.
What do you do for a living?
@@ValerieFire Currently, nothing. I am now a stay at home dad. But before my son was born last year, I was an independent IT contractor, network administrator, and custom hardware supplier DBA FAllen Computer Solutions.
Do you know about TekLager? The hardware they make is a bit expensive for consumer use but dirt cheap for enterprise and it is insane how well it performs.
You can easily run a small business (say a few dozen employees) on off-the-shelf hardware with pfSense etc. One of my clients is doing exactly that, with branches between different cities connected via a VPN between a pfSense box at each branch.
I'm using a Juniper SRX300 as my home router, which I bought used on ebay. You can get used enterprise hardware at reasonable price, and for home purposes, they are usually reliable enough.
My pfsense box runs on one xenon core and one gig of ddr3 ram. Absolutely plenty for my gigabit net. 2+ cores and 4G of ram have absolutely no use-case for a small router.
Its like having a car to go to your local shop a block away. I mean a car with 4 wheel drive, 800HP, slick tyres, maybe NOS.
But you forgot one thing: Intrusion Prevention Systems, live malware detectors, DOS mitigation, etc.
@@paulvorderegger1522 for a simple home router replacement? :D
@@re4zoon Im just saying that there are case where one would want (more than) 4GB of RAM and a few cores..m
@@paulvorderegger1522 of course there are, but that wasn't the point of the video, nor my comment.
What you are saying is using the above described car to do racing. For that, it's fine.
That's a great analogy. The average household would see no difference, but it's still technically better.
I've been running OPNSense for 2-3 years now, initially on a Dell SFF box with a i5-4590 and 8GB of RAM; currently, I have it on a "refreshed" mini-ITX build with the i5 and RAM scavenged from said Dell (screw Dell proprietary mobos and fans!) with a dual-port 2.5G NIC. I prefer bare metal, but IIRC it can be done on Proxmox or unRAID as well in docker containers.
Agreed. I have it in proxmox on amd and no issues. Previously ran on proxmox in an old refurb dell. Neither had problems, only upgraded to be able to run more VMs. Also, my opnsense gets frequent security updates which on many commercial routers is questionable.
Used pfSense on a Hyper-V Server for about 5 years. Rock solid.
Doing this in a Docker container scares the hell out of me.
I've been running Untangle on an old 2500k for several years now and can confirm it's good stuff. However one thing that it's not mentioned in the video is how, well, a normal router will use just a fraction of the power needed for a computer.
Ha, this is exactly what I did a few years ago when I wanted to upgrade from my AirPort Extreme. Love pfSense. Installed it on a little Protectli box with a 7100U, attached a couple of TP-Link APs, and haven't had a single issue since. The whole system has literally only been rebooted for firmware updates - it's awesome.
Another good OS option I'd say is Vyos I'd say. Its Linux based rather than *BSD, so for those not familiar with *BSD but are with Linux, it might be an easier choice. It doesn't come with a GUI though.
Have used VyOS before, virtualized and it works reall well. Not sure about its hardware compatability, or features as i used it in a home lab sense for some network infrastructure demos during one of the UKs many lockdowns. in addition it doesnt have a built in web interface, but as you said earlier its basically a linux distro, and im sure there are ones out there you can simply install(remembered vycontrol, but not really sure how well that works).plus the configuration is vaguely reminicent of the cisco style of doing things, and that really gets me going.
bsd ftw
ubiquiti uses a variant of it on their stuff
@unsubtract unix-like* lol
I would only select this option if you're really into Cisco / Juniper devices, as VyOS definitely has that feel for me.
0:25 You forgot the “modem” part which handles communication over that Internet port, and connecting to your ISP with your account credentials. The “router” really sits on top of all of them, “routing” data between all the three kinds of physical connection.
Not all routers have a built in modem. Usually, only the ones you get from your ISP will have a built in modem.
@@undead890 Generally you cant just plug in a new modem anyway. The ISP's node will ignore it until you call them to authorize it under your billing account, if they even let you. Without that, anyone could just stick a modem on the coax line and get free internet.
@@thegamerguy56 That varies by ISP and country quite a lot actually. For example in the UK most DSL based ISPs you can use any modem you like, a few prefer their own but if you try hard enough you can replace those too. Now cable or FTTP, you are locked to the ISPs modem.
In the US it seems kinda reversed. You can buy your own modem on Cable but not on DSL.
Some countries/ISPs even let you replace your FTTP ONT (modem) by having using a SFP ONT, but that's very niche though hopefully will become more commonplace going forward as it would make building your own router with built-in ONT possible.
These things are discussed a lot on the LTT forums.
My ISP doesn't even use a modem if you're on their fiber optic lines. I have a normal wifi router plugged directly into an ethernet port on the wall.
@@shred1894 The modem is part of the ONT (optical network terminator) installed by your ISP. The one I use has four connectors: 1. to a wall wart power supply 2. the ISP fiber 3. an Ethernet jack at 10Gb/s and 4. a POTS (plain old telephone system) port as unlimited phone service is part of the package.
5:58 works 99% of the time.
Unless you're getting power for free, I wouldn't use a desktop or even laptop for this purpose. One nice thing about commodity routers is that they sip power & will run for quite a while even on a low end UPS.
One thing I will say, as someone who used to work as tech support for an ISP, is that one should take the time to get fully comfortable with PFSense before committing to switch over in lieu of a standard router. The amount of times I had customers call who had little to no idea how to do even simple things on the PFSense they installed (or, even worse, their tech savvy friend/family member installed for them), complaining of slow speeds or routing issues, or packet loss, or high pings, or intermittent dropping (especially on DSL), is just frightening. And unless you hit the jackpot, there's basically zero chance that the tech support you get on the line will be able to help beyond making sure everything works plugged direct to the modem and sending you on your way to figure the rest out yourself, even if you are lucky enough to be with an ISP that is willing to support issues within the Local Network (mine initially didn't but shifted towards doing so a year or so before I left). The standard branded routers are all encountered commonly enough that most ISPs will either have emulators or guides for them, but PFSense, to many ISP tech support agents, may as well be a totally different language.
I know it should be common sense to make an effort to understand something that important before using it as the lynchpin of your internet access, but, unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who don't make that effort and then find themselves lost as soon as things go anything but smoothly.
I agree. ISPs are providing routers with very simple features and simple interface because the do not want to support the users with complex configurations. Sometimes, they take a brand name router and rebrand it with their logo and their own firmware that has even less features than the original one, just for limiting the error potential from the users and reducing the call volume in their call centers.
@@viaujoc yeah, I actually worked with our R&D team to develop custom firmware for our DSL modem/router combos that would let us set up the customer's login and Wi-Fi to go "reset" to presets based on the customer's choice when ordering the service (or getting a new modem) when factory resetting the modem, for the customers with less technical knowledge. It was especially useful because we were a third party and the first party install techs liked to factory reset people's modems after completing the install.
That being said, even with Cable internet, where we mostly used modem-only devices, with customers providing their own routers, we eventually started helping troubleshoot those as well, and aside from the occasional knucklehead that decided to buy a $10 special from one foreign market or another (our biggest customer base was in Toronto, so lots of different cultures going to stores or markets within their community and getting something that was made there), the worst to work with were people with DIY routers.
Part of the problem was people not being very knowledgeable about the OS they used, but even worse were the people who refused to even try to troubleshoot because they believed the router they built couldn't possibly be the problem.
@@R0D3R1CKV10L3NC3 I totally agree. I also worked for an ISP tech support here in Quebec many years ago and I hated taking a call from a DIY wannabe who was blaming the modem the ISP and everything else but the device that they built.
That DIY router will use a lot more power though
This! It's suddenly hundreds of watts instead of a dozen
Not really, my NUC draws 10W at max.
Nah, the most OEM routers actually are 4 devices nowadays. You forgot the modem. I have tried self build routers from different embedded and full sized x86 for many years now - it always was total crap! Even when using Intel enterprise network adapters these systems all had way higher packet loss and where much less reliable than a standard OEM router, despite the high theoretical throughput! And hostap NEVER ran even closely as stable as an access point, as any cheap OEM-router did by default. Also they eat a LOT of power, and electricity costs you an arm and a leg here in Europe now. The best experiences I had with routers that I flashed custom firmware on, especially Tomato (or now: FreshTomato).
Actually, they are 5 devices. People tend to forget the "services" such as DHCP, DNS, NTP, VPN, printer sharing, etc. Those services can be installed on a separate device to reduce the router exposure to vulnerabilities. But this can get tedious and it is just easier to keep them on the router.
@@viaujoc It's right that VPN and other services can be installed on dedicated servers or implented using specific hardware. VPN can really be a reason for running on dedicated hardware, because of the encryption needing a lot of performance or specialised hardware acceleration. But as VPNs still are rather exotic in private use, I didn't count this anyway.
The other things like SMB, DHCP, DNS, FTP, UPnP, WINS WebServer, WoL, AdBlock and whatever ... well, I assume 99% of people don't even know their home-"router" is supporting these ;)
Ha! Years ago, before consumer routers (and WiFi!) were available, I was buying old PCs from university labs, kitting them with a couple NICs, installing FreeBSD and selling them for home router/firewall systems. Everything old is new again. That said, modern routers are never CPU constrained as described and they use way less power than a PC. Don’t do this.
Yep. Buying off the shelf hardware routers are going to save you time and also money in power bills.
OpenWRT is also a lightweight and feature-full OS. It's based on Linux and supports things like Docker containers, so you can add plently of services that can't be used in a router by default (or it's kinda messy to get it working instead of running in a container)
I've been doing this for over a decade now. Very easy to see everything going on with the network and keeps the router from the ISP from being overwhelmed.
Outside of a medium sized business, you're never going to need the power of a full-blown pc for your routing. Unless you already have an old pc, you're better off with anything in openwrt's recommended routers section; cheaper, lower power and less work to maintain. When your existing router is failing you, it's normally due to specific parts being cheaped out on to meet low price points, causing bufferbloat and other similar problems rather that the concept of a low power soc being a poor.
Torrenting can absolutely fry older garbage routers. Ask me how I know. Our pfsense box with an 8 core atom can saturate gigabit with it and not really break a sweat.
This is a greatly timed video. I have been thinking of doing this, this may be the push I needed.
It's got so many advantages in my opinion. I've been using my own for ~3 years now. Only equipment from my ISP left are the TV boxes. Running an old (5~y) supermicro thing, iirc it's a low powered xeon with 16gb memory. Got Vyos as it's OS, mainly because I'm familiar with Linux and not with *BSD. Sweet advantage of it is that I run my DNS server and such on it too, everything in one box.
Would absolutely be interested in a full LTT video on how to do this. Need info on reliability and issues that may occur. I know Comcast won't help you at all with connection problems unless you use their expensive hardware.
As a self-taught "tech", you have inspired me to stretch my talents...I am more than willing [and soon ready] to build my OWN router!
I will keep my results in the family -- I have two brothers who are also "techs".
Getting your isp to bridge their network device is the hardest step in the process. Most require a business level service and won't bridge consumer service.
Bridging passes the public ip address to the network instead of NATting it to a private ip address and using dhcp to assign addresses.
Technically you can make a router-on-a-stick as long as you have a switch that supports VLANs.
hmm
What does router-on-a-stick mean? I've messed with VLANs on my switch but I don't know what you mean you could do.
@@deViant14 I think he means making a router PC with only one NIC. If it's a trunk/tagged port, it can act as if it was connected to all of the VLANs separately through virtual network interfaces.
@@szaszm_ This
@@zacharysandberg so if I setup a VLAN connected to WAN and pfsense on the NIC passed through from my proxmox and another VLAN connected there and to my LAN computers that would work?
Great content! Could have been a full tutorial video - not a quickie, but its great tip nonetheless!
That's why I love my AVM Fritz!box. Those Routers are extremely good, have a lot of great features and aren't in any means underpowered for a reasonable price.
Switching to a dedicated coax modem and small business firewall/router along with a dedicated small business AP was the best network upgrade I've made.
Never had a problem with wifi dropouts or speed, or coverage in 3 seperate houses using ISP modem/router combos in the last 6 years *Shrug*
One term: Energy Consumption
Prices exploded over here, with 0.40€ per kilowatt being the current norm. So no, i will not let a full blown computer run as a router.
Where is this? Paying $0.17 CAD on peak rates. Around half that on weekends and nights. There are hidden fees though....
@@pooshiesty Germany...
@@zacharysandberg i have a Pi4 with a 2 TB HDD attached doing several duties. Runs at ~10 Watt. Much more suitable to German energy prices at the moment.
In Quebec and British Columbia (Canada) where LTT is, electricity cost around 0.10$-0.15$CAN per kWh. So the cost of power here is not a big factor. At 0.15$ per kWh, each watt of power consumption on a device running 24/7 costs 1.31$ per year. I can imagine that this can become a more serious concern at 0.40 Euro per kWh.
Quebec and BC have cold weather and cheap electricity, a perfect combinaison for cost effective datacenters!
You can also use any device with only one NIC (ethernet port) and configurre the router as one armed router (aka router on a stick) with VLANs and a managed switch. my set up is exactly as that.
Can you explain a bit more detailed. Do you need router that support VLANs for this?
@@Tish0eX It's a really awkward way to do it but ultimately you need a switch that supports VLANs. It's just way easier to do it with two ports and not over-engineer something.
@SuperWhisk Any ethernet card made in the last 10 years will support vlans as along they support IEEE 802.1q
@Yuriy Umanskiy it's mainly in case you have a device laying around that you can't upgrade (mine is lenovo thinkcentre).
@@Tish0eX you basically use VLAN tagging to route your traffic around. The Wan, pfsense and Lan connected to the same managed switch that tag the ports accordingly
very nice video, I'm sad that you didn't mention openwrt as I think it's better if you use something like a pi due to better arm support and stuff like that but everything else was very nice,I enjoy
I'm a fan of Gargoyle (based on OpenWRT) for traffic shaping and family filtering. After the old Netgear died, I've got it running on a NUC-like computer and it's smooth as butter.
Buy a cheap-ish router and install OpenWRT (w/ adblock and SQM). I used it to replace my 100mbit ISP router. And it will do a couple of 4k Netflix streams on WiFi with no sweat.
Just like a NAS: you can build one, and it will be more powerful than an off the shelf device, but the off the shelf one will be plug and play, and the built one will require some ironing out the bugs
I would love to see the main channel do this, but you build the router into an art canvas or something so it's discrete
I would love to see you guys make one and run it against consumer routers!
That would be dope
"...will run circles around your old router, and will be a hack of al lot more reliable, and nicer to look at...."
"AND consume a lot of more power 24/7".
I would argue that for most people a router (maybe not the ISP one, but a better after market one) is the better choice. If you like to tinker around and don't care about downtimes because you missconfigured something than obviously building your own is a viable option 🙂
Well if you already run a file server / any server 24/7 then it's no brainier to just spin up a pfSense VM. Otherwise you'll be probably better getting a pre-build ARM pfSense device.
But honestly you only need it if you have a lot of traffic on your network (like me, I have 4500+ open connections) because consumer routers can't handle so much traffic or you need some advanced feature.
I agree, use the ISP router for the modem and attach a mid range modern wireless router, after some homework of course, and for most that will be much better. If you have your own servers etc... then it might be worth changing over but unless you enjoy tinkering I'd recommend a purpose built appliance or an enterprise grade wireless access point and router.
I did this about 6 months ago and wish I had done it earlier. There are a lot of things to learn but TH-cam is full of videos covering sophisticated builds for businesses but almost nothing for the simple at home basic couple of computers and some wireless devices. You could easily get a half dozen videos out of setup and config. There are so many options that assume the user is in a business or being dictated to use one package vs another. Still, I bought a solid brand, energy efficient office computer and PCIe 10G Network card from eBay and the money I saved over buying the traditional device was enough to still let me buy a 5 port TP-link 10GBase-T switch. It's faster than my internet service but I'm ready for the future today.
i use Untangle Firewall on their Z4 appliance from their site, works flawlessly. i used to just run the Untangle software on old PC's with two NIC's until they finally just died. Untangle worked amazingly on 2 different PC's with TP Link gigabit NIC's. i use 2 AP's and 1 router in AP mode for all things wireless, very rarely any hiccups . ill never go back to a conventional router again. the control, options and things you can learn with this sort of setup is a fun thing for me to do. just having the ability to connect to my house on the go via the VPN in Untangle is a huge resource. its nice when you need to get to your files while your away or for those times when you are on sketchy wireless and need the protection of your VPN back at home.
But what about…
1. size
2. efficiency
3. Convenience
How does these compare?
a really really long time ago, we had our own home router. it was a refurbished IBM PC with a NIC in there somehow that a family friend provided. Strangest contraption to date i think that i ever owned.
Nowadays you have your overpriced ubiquity stuff and the spider mesh craziness. Those have never really caused a problem for me but the weak link has always been the *modem* that the ISP provided. I still have the black box ones and not the white tube looking thing. they won't issue me a white tube thing unless it can be shown i need it (like if they issued me a new modem for whatever reason, I'll just get another black box :( )
now if I can make my own modem....
Even though this is certainly a nice experiment for all IT oriented minds, I'd still never recommend anyone to go this route. Rather just get a 65 euro Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X or pretty much anything else from Ubiquiti or MikroTik. Building your own is definitely not more "stable" or "long lasting." You will end up maintaining it like any other computer. And you're double screwed when your old computer as a router breaks. Just don't do it.
Recently moved from a TP-Link router to a MikroTik one, and even though the UI is more expert focused, the basic setup was just a couple more clicks, then you have a working setup and can start experiment with changes gradually. eg. I needed hairpin-NAT which my TP-Link couldn't do; it was working after an hour having the router and searching for tutorials online. pfSense is cool though and I would like to give it a try eventually, maybe with the next Raspberry generation if it has better PCIe bandwidth for 10Gb cards.
Wrong! I have had my Build Your Own router running Untangled for years and it has required far less maintenance than any retail solution. It has many more options and the performance is outstanding. I built it for the very reasons outlined in this video and I have zero regrets.
It you're a computer illiterate, then indeed don't do this, because you will certainly drown in the setup of pfsense. waaaaay too many options and IT-"slang" that you simply don't understand. Let someone who knows this stuff set it up for you.
N00b tips - 1) use PFSense, it is secure by default EG everything is blocked and must be allowed. 2) Disable uPNP 3) Block all incoming connections that do not originate from the LAN (aka inside your network) 4) use a Layer3 (L3) smart switch as it can do some routing, which will save the actual router some overhead. 5) put all IoT and guest devices on a separate, firewalled vlan. 6) don't use WiFi routers which have not had firmware updates in the last 18-24m .
Setting up my opnsense edge server presently. Using a Dell 3040, upgraded to i7 6700, 16g ram, 128 ssd added a ngff to 2.5gbe card, 4x usb3 A to 2.5gbe adapters. It's OP to say the least. Nginx server, multiple vpn tunneling, intrusions detection, vlans galore. It's a rabbit hole for sure when you have the cpu power to use it all.
Mikrotik, Ubiquiti, and TP-Link offer low-cost “pro” network equipment and access points with nice UIs for configuration without having to build a random PC you need to maintain. (Mikrotik UI is harder to use but very powerful.)
well using an x86 desktop PC as a router would drive up the electricity bill exceptionally don't you think? I doubt it's worth it considering that adding extenders in a mesh is probably a more sustainable option
The one i built had 200W power supply, but the parts I used only uses 100W max. CPU use isn't much when routing only, so actually power consumption is probably 30-40W.
@@haoweishi5538 a typical router uses between 5W and 15W so a yearly use of 44 kWh - 132 kWh for a typical router compared to 263 kWh - 350 kWh for your DIY router even though I personally think you underestimate the power usage of your build because you only measure CPU and not the system as a whole?
Imagine how bad are the 5-in-1s...
A router, a switch, an access point, a TV modem and a recorder...
Do monstrosities like this exist? Am I in the twilight zone?
@@madezra64 Yes they kind of exist. Look at Comcast Xfinity or Videotron Helix. They are not recorders but one box acts as the internet router, feeds TV terminals and provide home phone service. If the "gateway" (this is how they call the router) dies, then all your services are gone (internet, TV and phone line).
I am using a CM4 on a dual nic carrier board running OpenWRT and love it. It is plenty powerful and wasn't too expensive. I love having enterprise level control over my network.
Home routers are in fact 5-in-1 devices, even. Routers do masquerading for outgoing packages which is better suited to a real firewall. Then, there is switch, access point, DSL/cable modem and PBX (landline telephone).
I did exactly that at home. For a little more cash you can buy a Supermicro board with up to 4 Intel NICs. I am using that as a hypervisor to host my firewall as well as my WLAN controller, smart home server and PBX server in one box.
The hardest part is getting familiar with VLAN and bridging on Linux but once that's done, it's very easy to deploy new services or replace the existing ones. It's all perfectly modular.
It would be great to see a video on LTT channel comparing the performance of a DIY router you would build and a high end one that cost hundreds of dollars.
Please please do this. I've been trying to google this question for so long and I get no good results.
That’s incorrect. DIY router can only outperform in CPU intensive task such as using VPN client. However, it will never outperform in terms of throughput and latency. The hardware acceleration of even a cheap router will outperform most DIY router because DIY router is limited by the performance of CPU.
@@wojtek-33 Please don't talk about things you don't understand. Have you even tested a consumer grade router on IP performance tester properly in accordance with proper standard such as RFC2544? A poplular consumer grade router such as AC86U can have Agg Rx Tput around 1.488 Mpps, that's close to a commercial grade router. Try your DIY router, I guarantee you it will crash at much lower rate. Powerful CPUs are no use for high Mpps rate because that's not what they are designed to do, they can hardly forward few thousand packs at a time. Any consumer router can beat CPU bound router if you don't use it for CPU intensive task such as VPN.
@@wojtek-33 Routers regardless whether they are consumer or commercial use low powered CPU, small RAM and small storage because these are unreleated to network performance. Unless you want to use additional feature such as VPN, NAS etc on a router (and you shouldn't), CPU/RAM/Storage are not useful at all for high performance network device.
@@wojtek-33 You clearly never even touched a IP tester. Have you even tried putting any CPU bound router on IP tester? 64 frame size can go up 2 Mpps for i7, most CPU can only have around 100-200kpps. Please tell me how your c3558 can beat AC86U. Show me the test result.
A few things that could have been added to this video are how important it is to use a PC that is preferiblly small form factor and low power and also list the many other OS options that are avaialable for creating your own web appliance (pc based router). I have been running old PCs as web appliances for the better part of 2 decades at this point and have never looked back. If you are creative with some of the other OS options you can also add a lot of other functionality to the same machine without having a ton of other stuff plugged in.
They entirely missed out that a Raspberry pi4 would be ideal for the job as - gigabit ethernet
Cheap and low power consumption
@@MaxC_1 The only issues with using a Pi4 are that you have to add a second ethernet port that isn't limited by the throughput of the Pi chipset and you quickly run into the same issues that many off the shelf routers have as far as max throughput, number of simultaneous connections, encrypted tunneling, and very limited system resources if you decide to do any real stateful packet inspection.
If you can live within the limits of the Pi4 it can make a decent home router for many people.
@@kuhrd the port on Pi4 supports max 1Gbps so about 200MBps on a 5 port lanes say. Good enough for most networks
Besides that if you want higher speeds I prefer a compute module+io board which has a PCIe Gen2x1 which allows over 3Gbps throughput using a PCIe to ethernet adapter and a switch
After seeing this, I’m actually now curious how Linus should be using when making the ultimate custom made gaming router/pc
Back in the day, I used to build my own routers. I'd use an old PC, run a Linux distro on it (usually Red Hat -- this was back before they went Enterprise-only) and have both the Internet and a switch connected to the PC. Back then it was ISDN or maybe a T1 for the Internet, if I was doing the install at an office -- cable-modems definitely weren't a thing yet, at least not in my neck of the woods. DSL came along, and I still did my own router thing... And for a short while with a Cable Modem as well. But as soon as WiFi became a thing, I stopped doing it. Never occurred to me that an expensive aftermarket 3-in-one router/wifi/switch wasn't as good as my old DIY-router setup. I knew the ones provided by the cable company were crap, but I figured the more expensive ones were far better. And that the weekly required reboots were just par for the course.
Maybe I'll have to give it a try again.
sounds like you just told a love story lol
Best decision I did is turn my main router into an access point mode and have my Firewalla Purple as the main router/firewall. This doesn't only protect my network better but it's also makes it easier to manage coz of the phone app. 👍
2025: Smartphones suck. Build your own instead!
I would love to see Anthony or Jake run through all of this on LTT, I think it would be really interesting :D
Errr, a crucial part of those so called routers is also the modem functionality! Do your own modem, do your own router, do your own switch and do your own wifi. Now you're good to go! Also consider efficiency: ASICs built for routing and switching are not found on PCs, look for a designated router instead.
A-AND: Separating networks is one nice and easy layer of security, go for it. But claiming devices were "protected", even if one subnet becomes compromised is quite a bold statement. At least VLANS should be recommended here and a pro tip would be to use network namespaces in Linux if using a PC for routing.
I run OPNsense on a Protectli FW2B small form factor PC myself. I demoted my AC-68U to just being a wireless access point and I've added a pair of switches (one near the other devices and one at the other end of the apartment so I only have to run one cable down the hall) to further reduce the strain on my aging wireless access point.
Ive used pfsense on PC Engines Alix mini PCs before. Works really well.
The difficulty is the energy and space use of running a PC, with fans. Reliable, sure... but not without some maintenance.
I'd also recommend Ubiquiti products for decent routers. The video imaged a Ubiquiti wireless access point, for example. This is the approach I take for most clients, as these commercial options are quite powerful as well.
Standard routers are actually about 7 devices in one 😉
Please explain??
@@YouGotOptions2 it's a router, switch, firewall, access point, DHCP server, DNS server and sometimes also a VPN server/client
I've used pfSense in the past, but ran into a lot of bugs and other oddities that caused me grief. I moved on to Untangle and while is not free (~$50 a year), it certainly is pretty powerful, dare I say even more powerful than pfSense even with the added packages.
i always wanted my router to suck 150W out of the wall...
but i get the point. Nice video!
Most people don't need a custom router for general home usage. I've considered going down this rabbit hole in the past. In the end, I settled for a TP Link Archer C6 along with a Raspberry Pi Zero running pi hole and DHCP server. Though it would have been fun running pfsense in a low power celeron board, I just did not want to add another PC in my maintenance job list. The setup I currently have works with 5 phones, one tab and two desktops just fine.
I built a router once with PFSense and whenever I would download games, movies, and etc my speeds were throttled. I just ended up buying a Unifi UDM Base and it has been great.
What was genius back in 2010's is old and clunky now. You can make a powerful router using an ARM CPU. One example is a Mikrotik hAP AC2 that I use at home. If you don't do any advanced networking even a basic MIPS CPU based router hacked with OpenWRT firmware will do wonders. An x86 PC will either be new and expensive or old and waste a lot of energy while mostly idling. Cost aside, I don't believe it would be reasonable for an amateur to go through all the hoops. This is really trying to go the hard way. This video is nice piece of trivia, some misinformation here and there, and then nothing more.
THIS! This is the comment I was trying to find. I've been using the same hAP AC2 to manage my entire home network consisting of 20+ devices and a 400 Mbps FTTH link, and it surely did not let me down so far. It's incredible how much horsepower such a small thing has, looking through its graphs you can see the CPU usage has never surpassed 25%. No need at all for such an extravagant solution as the one mentioned in the video. In fact, in the hands of an inexperienced user, a DIY solution can perform worse than your ISP or off-the-shelf router.
Nice commercial video, but everyone hoped you did a REAL dyi … not …
You forgot to mention OpenWRT which works on both x86/x64 and all kinds of stock routers. Even replacing stock router firmware (on supported ones) dramatically improves performance, stability and adds a whole bunch of new features.
Dont forget that the router (mostly) runs 24/7 so if you use your PC for router then the electrical bills might not be worth of squeezing bit of more speed out of your internet connection... The main mesaage here should be that you do not need all-in-one device but you can check whats on the market and maybe you will find that buying two or even three dedicated devices (router/firewall, wifi ap, switch) might do better job for you.
USB C powered notebook mainboards with M.2 storage (like Framework mainboards when they start aging and getting replaced by 13th gen Intel or AMD based boards) would be awesome for this. POE to USB C adapter so no extra power cord is needed if you have a POE switch, and another simple usb c to ethernet adapter, and good to go.
Goodbye power efficiency. If you need more powerful router get a more powerful router. Running a PC or laptop 24/7 is not effective.
Current notebooks actually can run at about 6Watt idle. It's still a bit more than an OEM router, but in the range of acceptable. But many experiences with a lot of self built routers where absolutely terrible for other reasons! It's not worth, even worse than an OEM router.
I don't mind a 25-30 watt load from a small PC. Makes no difference on my power bill. My G5400 (58w pentium) spends most of it time at 3% load.
@@elmariachi5133 if powerful routers were thousands of dollars then using a PC would be justified. But you can get a mikrotic router for less than 80 USD that can handle anything that you throw at it and have a beast of an OS.
@@mitakka Right, but a modern notebook can additionally be your power saving home server, which is very useful for a lot of people, including the capability of running VMs. I am actually planning on buying a used one at about 250€ with a broken screen, remove the standard casing and 3d print an enclosure with space (and the needed adapters/cables) for SATA drives, PCIe cards using an mPCIe adapter (for example for an 2nd LAN-port), better cooling and whatever.
So, that's the appeal of x86 hardware .. but of course it doesn't run great, yet :(
Remember too, that off-the-shelf router operating systems have NSA backdoors built into them, that hackers have figured out how to use too. So using something else is a very good idea, to keep both the state and regular hackers from creeping around your network.
Dude, ARM, Intel, AMD etc. have backdoors built-in the chip itself.
These spam bots really trying hard aren't they?
My best word of advice if buying a normal router is to ignore the first thing you generally see on the box. Always check to make sure it at least has gigabit Ethernet. A router than advertise wireless speeds of whatever it wants, but if it is only 10/100 Ethernet, you will never see internet speeds of more than 100 MBPS. Make sure it at least has gigabit. There is no reason to spend much on a router if it lacks gigabit Ethernet.
Turns out I've actually done this as I was just setting up a home network way back in the days of Windows 95. Turned my home-built computer into the home's server that hooked into my DSL connection (I signed up for DSL so fast when it was offered in my area that I was one of about 100 people that got the original PC card modems they offered). It was all wired back then, so some very long cables and a lot of switches.