First, a hardware question. I’m looking for a computer to use as a… router? Louis calls it a router but it’s a computer that is upstream of my whole network and has two ethernet ports. And suggestions on this? Ideal amount or RAM? Ideal processor/speed? I have fiber internet, 10 gbps up and 10 gbps down, so I’m willing to spend a little more on higher bandwidth components. I’m assuming I won’t need a GPU.

Anyways, has anyone had a chance to look at his guide? It’s accompanied by two youtube videos that are about 7 hours each.

I don’t expect to do everything in his guide. I’d like to be able to VPN into my home network and SSH into some of my projects, use Immich, check out Plex or similar, and set up a NAS. Maybe other stuff after that but those are my main interests.

Any advice/links for a beginner are more than welcome.

Edit: thanks for all the info, lots of good stuff here. OpenWRT seems to be the most frequently recommended thing here so I’m looking into that now. Unfortunately my current router/AP (Asus AX6600) is not supported. I was hoping to not have to replace it, it was kinda pricey, I got it when I upgraded to fiber since it can do 6.6gbps. I’m currently looking into devices I can put upstream of my current hardware but I might have to bite the bullet and replace it.

Edit 2: This is looking pretty good right now.

  • ShortN0te@lemmy.mlEnglish
    9·
    3 days ago

    TLDR, the developers of pfSense are not the nicest people sometimes. If this bothers you, consider checking out OPNsense.

    So first the author is arguing around on the router section that you should not buy a cheap router but then goes for pfsense instead of opnsense, i understand that when you are used to pfsense that you may not want to switch but recommending it for new ppl is just stupid. They have shown their hostality against their OS community in the past see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13615896

    • tutus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      I use pfSense and tried to migrate away in the past. The changes I would have had to make to setup opnsense were so significant that I gave up for to lack of time. I don’t have time luxury of downtime so I need to migrate quickly.

      But if I were starting again I’d absolutely avoid the pfSense project and their childish shitty behaviour.

      I do plan to buy more hardware to replace my current pfSense box and take my time to implement opnsense gradually.

      • TVA@thebrainbin.org
        2·
        1 day ago

        Yeah, I bought the 3100 to support them and regretted that decision, unfortunately, when it came time to replace I was in a time crunch like you and wasn’t able to run my backups though a translation and it was taking way too long to do it manually so I had to just load pfSense and load the backup.

        If I ever buy new hardware and the old isn’t dead though, I’m definitely going to try and make the shift away from it.

    • keyez@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      When I first started self hosting in 2018 I didn’t know about how PFsense handled themselves and got a netgate appliance and used it up until 2 years ago and it ran great. Not a bad recommendation by any means but also understand expectations and opinions shift.