Can you please tell me all about your DIY router?

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? 🌞

Not sure how “DIY” you want to go. I’ve been liking OPNSense though. Running it on an air cooled Protectli box.

Handles a symmetric 2Gbps connection just fine.

Originally I was thinking I’d find a used business mini pc and put some open source router OS on there, still haven’t picked which one. But I’ve gotten super into, like, being cautious about power consumption and some of the little boxes you can get on AliExpress seem like that might be a better option? I’m not sure yet. What’s a Protectli, if you don’t mind?

@EmilieEasie Protectli are basically the same aliexpress boxes but with some kind of support afaik.

opnsense is probably the sweet spot for most tinkerers. either on an old thin client (with enough ethernet ports) or a multiport aliexpress box