With all the gov’t attacks on privacy these days I’ve been thinking about getting my own router. I’ve never done it and am pretty new to network stuff overall. I certainly welcome any recommendations for routers but I mainly have a stupid question:
Is it as simple as just swapping out the isp router? I’ve disconnected anything I had exposed to the internet and use LAN only right now so none of my old port forwarding rules are needed.
The thing is, your typical router from isp is not only a router, it is also a modem, a firewall, and an access point. The modem part is most problematic, you usually can’t replace isp modem. Which means in most cases your isp router device has to stay (even if you use it only as amodem). Then you can of course place your own device between the isp router and your home network. It should be at least a router and a firewall. A good choice is openWRT as other people mentioned. You can flash it on supported routers. Or, you can buy cheap old office computers (there are models with more then one NICs) and run openWRT on that. It’s Linux after all. You can add a wifi pcie card or use another device as access point. Another option is something like OPNsense, which is firewall first. Disadvantage is that it is openBSD (not Linux) and support for wifi is not good so with it, you probably need an extra ap.
Yeah I hadn’t realized this. I was hoping I could just swap out a new router for the current isp unit. It’s beginning to make sense though, I just have to turn the Bell modem/router to act as just a modem. Gonna take some time and research more into it before I make any decisions. Thanks for taking the time.
Good thing is that you can just connect your custom router to the isp router and create a subnet with which you can experiment until you are confident and then you just switch your devices to the subnet (or multiple subnets).
Oh cool, so I could just connect the WAN without changing anything on the isp modem/router and the new router would be it’s own subnet network, kind of like a guest network? Then when things look good I could just switch the isp modem/router to ‘bridge’ or DMZ settings and shunt everything through the new one?
The wan being the connection from the isp router. But yes. You likely won’t get rid of isp router, but if you create your own subnet(s) and the only device connected to your isp router would be your router, everything would be safe (firewalled) from everything on the outer network (and of course internet).
not trying to nitpick but opnsense is freebsd
Yes, true, i was probably still stuck on the open sense in my mind. Thanks for the correction!