I'm building myself a router for fun (and because finding an IPv6 router with AC is difficult and very expensive)

I'm building myself a router for fun (and because finding an IPv6 router with AC is difficult and very expensive).

I'm getting an 2nd gen i5 machine with 4GB of ram and two PCI slots, which has a super small form factor. Now before you say this is overkill, it's like $35. I could get an old poweredge for marginally cheaper, but those things take up so much space.

I'm also getting a 2 port gigabit PCI NIC, one port will connect to a gigabit switch and the other port will go to the cable modem.

I plan on also buying a PCI AC wireless NIC for wifi.

I imagine the final topology will look something like this:

network attached device -> lan0 -> wan0
wifi network attached device -> wlan0 -> lan0 -> wan0

Am I doing anything incorrectly, or could anything be improved?

bump

buy a real accesspoint off ebay versus the USB route and just configure it to use the 'router' as the gateway/dhcp server

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What is the benefit of having one of these routers?

I get IPv6 support, much more fine grained control using iptables

I don't use USB here at all. I understand buying an AP will come with a free DHCP server, but couldn't I just use dhcpd or something?

Is it because the wifi signal range will be shitty without AP grade antennas/radios?

How is performance?

That's overkill - see buffer bloat.

Just get a Mikrotik Routerboard, those things can do BGP, RIP, OSPF, VRRP, VPN and slew of other technology usually reserved for higher-end hardware. Shop around you can get a decent one for under 60 bucks.

That looks terrible. Get something simple and put pfsense on it and then use a managed switch to handle vlans.

Also don't bother with ip6 especially on the lan side that is just a waste of fucking time.

>I plan on also buying a PCI AC wireless NIC for wifi.


I misread, but I think you did too so we're even:

I plan on also buying a PCI AC wireless NIC for wifi.


as USB not PCI.

In terms of DHCP, I think you misunderstand what I mean by AP. I mean a pure layer 1 access point (Cisco, 1140 series, 2600 series, 3600 series) turned to autonomous mode with your pfsense box or whatever acting as their gateway & DHCP server. You get the best of all worlds by specialization.

You spelled pfsense wrong

>I'm building myself a router for fun
>for fun
>for fun
>fun
kys

Oh my god, what you're doing is retarded.

Ubiquiti Edgerouter Lite, Unifi switch, and Unifi AP AC Lite.

Done.

Half of the project is to create a futureproof router setup that doesn't drop connection or have crappy speeds like consumer hardware.

The other half is just to learn more about networking. I never had a formal networking education, and I figure setting up my own network from scratch and messing around with iptables will help me learn.

The third half is I kinda want to have the router host files (and possibly do video decoding). It's like NAS except with SATA instead of USB 2.0 that all the crappy routers have.

How is what I'm doing retarded? In large datacenters they have 1U servers as routers.

>In large datacenters they have 1U servers as routers.
You are not in a datacenter and they have far more than that and routing is done with Layer 3 switches, too. Are you going to buy a Layer 3 switch?

pfSense doesn't support Wi-Fi cards very well and those are shit for this purpose to begin with. You will now have a network appliance that draws 45W at idle instead of

lol retard

routers dont host files that is stupid as fuck to even consider when trying to make something dedicated.

and the palos i use at work are a fucking hell of a lot bigger than 1u

Futureproof? No. Internet facing nas? Come on. Decoding video on your router? Full retard.

Why would you use x86 processor in router? You're going to kill our planet with your power consumption...

>BGP, RIP, OSPF, VRRP
You do not heed this shit is SOHO.
Mikrotik openvpn is broken and nobody gives a shit, no extra software like tor or shadowsocks and you cant compile your own, most 3g/4g modems are not supported.
Their generic ap/routers is overpriced shit.
700mhz mips for 130$? 90$ for AP without seamless roaming?
Crs125 and lhg5 is gud, but it is a different story.

im thinking this was before your time but pic related wouldve been more apt