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.
Oof. Looks like I’ve got more homework to do. I’m tired lol. Thanks for the write up, I’ll look into this more.
Seriously spend $80 on a supported router like TP-Link and use OpenWRT.
It’s not super complicated there are good guides and it will vastly improve your defenses
Man I need to get off my ass and do that. I almost did last year but then some news dropped about firmware backdoors discovered in some routers, and I got scared lol.
To anyone else like me who wants to do it, there is a big list of supported hw by OpenWRT here. Also you can click around, they have listings for other mfgs.
That’s weird; the “firmware backdoor” thing ought to have incentivized you to go for OpenWRT even more, not scared you off. OpenWRT is the solution to untrustworthy manufacturer-provided firmware!
This is great thank you
I’m setting up a self hosted Nextcloud and now I’m realizing I should probably do this while I’m at it.
When you say supported router do you mean one that supports OpenWRT?
Yes
And you should set up your home router first IMO. OpenWRT makes it easy to set up VPN, guest network, per-device controls, even NAS (internet-facing or purely LAN)
I had Claude help me with configuration, troubleshooting and optimization – highly recommend.
Once your home network is relatively secure you will have a solid base for additional services
Ok cool. So if I understand, the isp router is used as a modem, so instead of devices connecting to the isp modem/router, the new router sits between the connection so the isp modem/router goes to the new router, which connects to devices?
So the main cable goes into the isp router on LAN4, I connect from WAN to my new router, and I assume I also need to swap the cable that goes from the isp router to my ethernet junction from the isp router to my new one, so ethernet also goes through the new one?
Correct. The box your ISP gives you almost certainly has both a modem and a wifi router. You put this box in “bridge” mode, which means it’s only serving as a modem/pipe connector. It just hands all the traffic over to your OpenWRT router.
Internet <->Modem(bridge)<->wifi router(OpenWRT)