I wanted to use pihole on my home network which led me down a rabbit hole for chosing a router that would be flexible in case where I want to upgrade hardware later on. I am a proponent of open source software, which is part of what started the spiral.
In general there are a couple widely adopted open source routers.
- pfsense
- OPNsense
- openWRT
pfsense and OPNsense were both forked from the same original repository and were originally based on FreeBSD. The two offerings have a pretty wild background. https://www.xda-developers.com/why-use-opnsense-over-pfsense-dont-trust-netgate/
Originally some of the hardware I was looking to use was a netgate router that runs pfSense, but after doing that investigation, I can’t say I aligned with the values of pfSense.
openWRT I have heard of and is widely used - looking to use a router that would be compatible with that… or just get a TP-Link https://www.tp-link.com/us/home-networking/wifi-router/archer-be230/
- The issue I have with this is the charging for security as a service.
For now this is shelved until I get more time to narrow down a setup. Initial thoughts are a custom device with several NICs running OPNSense for the router and an access point running openWRT. e.g. https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/wifiextenders/bridgedap