my new "router"
Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2023 2:42 pm
Soo.... I may have gone overboard on the a new DIY "router" 
I decided to replace my old Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X. Its from 2015 and its rocking a SoC containing a 880 MHz dual-core CPU, 256MB of DDR3 RAM and 256MB of NAND storage, and 5x Gigabit ports. Slightly bigger than a deck of cards, power draw was less than 10 watts. I paired this with an old Netgear R7000 Nighthawk router converted to Access Point mode for my WiFi. Its all getting a little old. So I decided to update them both.
Then I found a Hunsn Micro Firewall appliance, this one actually https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B53P7DVD
Stumbled onto a lightening deal around the holidays for cheaper than a Celeron mini or Intel NUC. It’s a fanless barebones box with a Core i7-1165G7 (4c/8t) 4.7GHz, six Intel i225-V 2.5GbE ports, M.2 NVMe, M.2 WiFi spot. The M.2 drive is the super short 2242 type. I did not have any of those, so used a 1TB 2.5” SSD from the pile. Slapped 32GB of ram in it as well.
This new setup idles around 20 watts, but its also doing more than just routing. The base is Proxmox and I carved it up with virtual machines.
The docker hosts are Debian. I have two because I have completely separated the house LAN from my homelab LAN. Each of the dockers are running Portainer for easier docker management, Heimdall as a dashboard, and Tailscale so I can VPN back into the networks. On the house side I have a PiHole VM running for whole-house ad block. Working on adding in Uptime Kuma to track the services I have on my NAS boxes.
Also have an Ubuntu VM that is hosting the TP-Link Omada software controller. This is the software for controlling my new access point, or points if I decide to go the mesh route.
oh, and pFsense VM for the router work lol. Of the six physical ports I have 5 on the router VM, and one to sperate out the proxmox admin access to a management network.
I decided to replace my old Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X. Its from 2015 and its rocking a SoC containing a 880 MHz dual-core CPU, 256MB of DDR3 RAM and 256MB of NAND storage, and 5x Gigabit ports. Slightly bigger than a deck of cards, power draw was less than 10 watts. I paired this with an old Netgear R7000 Nighthawk router converted to Access Point mode for my WiFi. Its all getting a little old. So I decided to update them both.
Then I found a Hunsn Micro Firewall appliance, this one actually https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B53P7DVD
Stumbled onto a lightening deal around the holidays for cheaper than a Celeron mini or Intel NUC. It’s a fanless barebones box with a Core i7-1165G7 (4c/8t) 4.7GHz, six Intel i225-V 2.5GbE ports, M.2 NVMe, M.2 WiFi spot. The M.2 drive is the super short 2242 type. I did not have any of those, so used a 1TB 2.5” SSD from the pile. Slapped 32GB of ram in it as well.
This new setup idles around 20 watts, but its also doing more than just routing. The base is Proxmox and I carved it up with virtual machines.
- router.png (266.44 KiB) Viewed 6853 times
Also have an Ubuntu VM that is hosting the TP-Link Omada software controller. This is the software for controlling my new access point, or points if I decide to go the mesh route.
oh, and pFsense VM for the router work lol. Of the six physical ports I have 5 on the router VM, and one to sperate out the proxmox admin access to a management network.
