First, a hardware question. I’m looking for a computer to use as a… router? Louis calls it a router but it’s a computer that is upstream of my whole network and has two ethernet ports. And suggestions on this? Ideal amount or RAM? Ideal processor/speed? I have fiber internet, 10 gbps up and 10 gbps down, so I’m willing to spend a little more on higher bandwidth components. I’m assuming I won’t need a GPU.
Anyways, has anyone had a chance to look at his guide? It’s accompanied by two youtube videos that are about 7 hours each.
I don’t expect to do everything in his guide. I’d like to be able to VPN into my home network and SSH into some of my projects, use Immich, check out Plex or similar, and set up a NAS. Maybe other stuff after that but those are my main interests.
Any advice/links for a beginner are more than welcome.
Edit: thanks for all the info, lots of good stuff here. OpenWRT seems to be the most frequently recommended thing here so I’m looking into that now. Unfortunately my current router/AP (Asus AX6600) is not supported. I was hoping to not have to replace it, it was kinda pricey, I got it when I upgraded to fiber since it can do 6.6gbps. I’m currently looking into devices I can put upstream of my current hardware but I might have to bite the bullet and replace it.
You can certainly build a box for for use as a router, but you don’t need to.
If your not planning to build out anything public facing and aren’t going to run ipv6 internally, you can use any router to block all inbound ports and run everything over wire guard or tailscale.
There are a million and one ways to self host services. First question needs to be, what do you want to do and why. That will dictate the how.