Now that I have time for hobbies again I wanna dive right in to building up a home lab. Right now I just have a Netgear router that reached end of life, and a NAS i’d like to make accessible remotely, and a DIY router seems like the correct next step for me. I’m very interested in ad-blocking network wide and someday I’d like to host my own little webpage, but for now I’m really just barely getting started.
I’m information gathering, I don’t know what I don’t know and my networking skills are pretty weak anyway. But even if your needs and desires have nothing to do with mine, I also just like to hear people talk about their set ups. Please? 🌞


Right now I’m using a Fortigate 101E, but eons back I used a simple PC built as cheaply as possible, installed Linux, ip_forward = 1, and iptables.
I am, however, tempted to build something semi-professional based on a banana pi, as I need something custom for work.
Can I ask why you need something custom for work? I’m myself curious how I’ll make my DIY set up play nice with my job’s VPN 😅
Highly niche requirements not serviced by available hardware without costing waaaay too much. For example, we’re currently using Cisco Meraki MX85, and even they’re not quite there.
returns after some googling oh my LOL i see