Hello everyone,
My current router from 2014 is starting to give up and I am searching for a new one to replace it. I have 3 criteria that I would like for my replacement to have:
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Be relatively new
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Less than a $150 USD
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Have enough power to run a network-wide VPN (my old router would max the CPU when running Wireguard and my speeds were very abysmal)
So far, I have found 3 routers that I am thinking of; Dynalink DL-WRX36, Linksys E8451, and Belkin RT3200. Truth be told, I am gravitating towards the Dynalink because it is the best overall for the price point it’s on.
I am hosting nextCloud, Lemmy, a plex_debrid serverc SearXNG, and so many more so I need hardware that is able to at least theoretically match my 1Gbps from my ISP over Wireguard with more computational power left over.
Your advice would be very appreciated.
Thank you.
Sounds like you’re trying to run a decent little homelab, so I would personally recommend going with prosumer hardware. Lots of N95, N100, and N5105 routers available on AliExpress, you should be able to flash OpenWRT, OPNSense, PFSense, whatever you want. I would advise getting one with an i225 or i226 NIC for best software compatibility (support for Realtek NICs can be sketchy).
I waited for a sale and got this one (N5105 version) for $95: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804915099903.html
I got the barebones version, then supplied my own Crucial RAM and a cheap hard drive for under $50. It runs PFSense without even breaking a sweat, and supports 2.5Gbps. There are cheaper options too, but I decided to stick with Topton as it’s a brand that’s well-reviewed by Youtubers that I watch.
After that, all you need is a Wifi access point. You probably can use your old router in AP mode for now, and then consider upgrading to a newer one later. I bought a Unifi U6 Pro AP and now my home network is incredibly overprovisioned for my puny little homelab, all for about $300. Lots of room to grow if I want to.
These are definitely the way to go, plenty of fanless mini pcs with at least 2 NICs aimed squarely at this use case.
And even the little n100 chip is more than most normal people need for a router, even with an encrypted VPN or deep packet inspection, so you can virtualise and run some light services alongside the router OS, like jellyfin, a caching service, or something like Grafana
Yeah an N100 is overkill, unless you want to use Proxmox to virtualize multiple things. I got an N5105, which is significantly slower, and even THAT is kinda overkill for just running PFSense in a SOHO environment like I’m doing.
I’m interested in caching services for my network. Which one would you suggest between Varnish, Squid and Lan-cache?
Wireless APs are the way to go - make sure to get ones that support VLANs for better network security.