[Thoughts] [DIY] Building router

[linkedlist]

Hello there,

Well, you do know the importance of the bits of 0's and 1's streaming over a network.
Recently, I have been facing issues such as frequent disconnection of WiFi, when connected via WiFi sometimes few devices will not be able to connect to internet but other devices would be connected (Hold on! I have turned off firewall, so this is not due to any security feature of the router).
I am considering to build a router using either a Raspberry Pi 4 or any low end PC.
I would like to hear your thoughts on this.
If anyone has performed this, kindly share your wisdom.

Regards,
Linkedlist

 

[navinbhatia]

I would recommend against that. It does make for a fun project, but complete responsibility falls on you when you mess up something and the internet goes down. I tried building one using Compute Module 4 last year. I also used to run pfSense on an HP desktop. I feel it was not worth the time and effort I put in.

Building your own router will not solve your wireless problems. To improve wireless performance and coverage, move the router to where it is centrally located and unobstructed.

What router are you currently using?

 

[rsaeon]

It sounds like you have wifi issues more than actual routing/firewall issues. You may want to try manually assigning channels for your wifi. If you do decide to build your own router, you'll still need an off-the-shelf wireless access point or wireless router to use as an access point. There just isn't much support for the latest wireless standards with linux or freebsd distros like OPNsense.

I built my first router about fifteen years ago, about five years after my first seedbox:



This was running m0n0wall with a VIA 733MHz processor, 64MB of memory and a 32MB mmc card for storage. It was pretty amazing, I was able to setup QoS to throttle torrenting traffic in favour of regular http traffic so no one at home felt any internet slow downs while I was able to download as much as I wanted without having to schedule torrents.

I eventually upgraded to a proper board, one of the ALIX ones from https://www.pcengines.ch/ for better power consumption and reliability:



This worked well for a couple of years until I sold it and replaced it with a Duron 1GHz system that worked for about five years without any issues.

I replaced that with a really cool industrial mini-itx motherboard that I found on Amazon.com and transitioned over to OPNsense:



This was short lived because about five years ago I needed a multi-wan solution so I built this using really ancient parts:



All in all, it was a fun journey and I learned a lot about networking. As the years went on, I found less and less time for tinkering and needed more a robust solution so I dived right in with Mikrotik hardware and spent a year punishing myself with the way it works and how it's configured whenever I had the free time to do so. These days I have an elaborate Mikrotik setup for three isolated networks (home, work, personal) — it has been operational for two years now.

So yeah, if you like the idea of single-purpose computers and want an army of boxen then I'd highly recommend building your own router, seedbox, a nas for the family, a nas for yourself, media streaming server, scanning station, adblock and more. If anything, it'll be a good learning experience, provided you have the time and motivation to learn things outside of your comfort zone.

 

[montsa007]

Hello there,

Well, you do know the importance of the bits of 0's and 1's streaming over a network.
Recently, I have been facing issues such as frequent disconnection of WiFi, when connected via WiFi sometimes few devices will not be able to connect to internet but other devices would be connected (Hold on! I have turned off firewall, so this is not due to any security feature of the router).
I am considering to build a router using either a Raspberry Pi 4 or any low end PC.
I would like to hear your thoughts on this.
If anyone has performed this, kindly share your wisdom.

Regards,
Linkedlist

Why do you want to reinvent the wheel?
Get a better router everything will be pre-configured Vs. trying to fight an uphill battle & if that setup throws an error at 2 pm in the middle of a zoom meeting, you will have to scratch the walls