Comment on Best resources to learn more about networking
TCB13@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Start by replacing your IPS-provided router with something that runs OpenWrt and explore around.
Comment on Best resources to learn more about networking
TCB13@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Start by replacing your IPS-provided router with something that runs OpenWrt and explore around.
Tinnitus@lemmy.world 5 months ago
This is something I have on my to-do list. I just need to figure out which router to go with.
TCB13@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Well, how much wifi and open-source do you really want?
If you are willing to go with commercial hardware + OpenWRT you might want to check the table of hardware at openwrt.org/toh/…/toh_available_16128_ax-wifi and openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_864_ac-wifi. Solid picks for the future might be the Netgear WAX2* line (no USB), the GL.iNet GL-MT6000, ASUS RT-AX59U, Belkin RT1800, Belkin RT3200, Linksys E7350, Linksys E8450. One of those models is now fully supported the others are on the way. If you don’t mind having older wifi a Netgear R7800 is solid.
For a full open-source hardware and software experience you need a more exotic brand like this www.banana-pi.org/en/bananapi-router/. The BananaPi BPi R3 and here is a very good option with a 4 core CPU, 2GB of RAM Wifi6 and two 2.5G SFP ports besides the 4 ethernet ports. There’s also an upcoming board the BPI-R4 with optional Wifi 7 and 10G SPF.
Side note: while there are things like OPNsense and pfSense that may make sense in some cases you most likely don’t require that. You’ve a small network and OpenWRT will provide you with a much cleaner open-source experience and also allow for all the customization you would like. Another great advantage of OpenWRT is that with a great router like the BananaPi BPi R3 you’ve the ability to install 3rd party stuff in your router, you may even use qemu to virtualize stuff like your Pi-Hole on it or simply run docker containers.