37 votes

How to turn anything into a router

8 comments

  1. [4]
    goose
    Link
    I love the spirit of the title, but I think the title misses the mark of "anything". It makes me want to click it and read about how this guy put BSD on a European toaster requiring a 220 to 110...

    I love the spirit of the title, but I think the title misses the mark of "anything". It makes me want to click it and read about how this guy put BSD on a European toaster requiring a 220 to 110 voltage converter, and that you get speed boosts if you insert a slice of sourdough.

    20 votes
    1. [2]
      Eric_the_Cerise
      Link Parent
      Agreed. I have a rice cooker that I never use anymore, which I was hoping to repurpose as a router...

      Agreed. I have a rice cooker that I never use anymore, which I was hoping to repurpose as a router...

      8 votes
      1. goose
        Link Parent
        Well, on the other hand, you could easily hide a raspi in an old rice cooker......

        Well, on the other hand, you could easily hide a raspi in an old rice cooker......

        5 votes
    2. mxuribe
      Link Parent
      No, no, most people know that sourdough is the worse type of bread for a speed boost in networking...Its just so good tasting that humans and network packets alike want to slow things down in...

      No, no, most people know that sourdough is the worse type of bread for a speed boost in networking...Its just so good tasting that humans and network packets alike want to slow things down in order to better relish the yummiess!!! lol :-D

  2. [2]
    papasquat
    Link
    I've gotta say, it's cool to know how to do all of this stuff manually, but for most people, this would be completely impractical. It's the whole reason why firewall/router distributions like...

    I've gotta say, it's cool to know how to do all of this stuff manually, but for most people, this would be completely impractical. It's the whole reason why firewall/router distributions like pfsense exist.

    You can install an ISO, and have all of these features instantly available with a great cli configuration system and web GUI to manage it.

    There's no well in hell I'd ever manually install and configure each individual component of a router/firewall myself. It doesn't seem practical just about anywhere.

    7 votes
    1. Bwerf
      Link Parent
      Good news then, noone suggested that either.

      Good news then, noone suggested that either.

      4 votes
  3. knocklessmonster
    Link
    I started trying to tighten up my homelab network after realizing that my router (slash-AP) was bouncing bridged Podman traffic. The first setup I did was a Raspberry Pi 5 8GB I had sitting around...

    I started trying to tighten up my homelab network after realizing that my router (slash-AP) was bouncing bridged Podman traffic. The first setup I did was a Raspberry Pi 5 8GB I had sitting around with a spare dongle I bought initially for work to provide LAN/WAN, and OpenWRT (which runs on ARM, 32-bit and 64-bit PC platforms as well!). After the lockdown, I quickly ordered the BananaPi-manufactured OpenWRT-designed ONE router just to have something in my back pocket. I also have a couple of routers (a GL-iNet running my homelab, a GL-iNet I kept vanilla and another I don't remember running OpenWRT) as spare/travel routers.

    Heck, virtual network appliances are just VMs with customized OSes that route traffic around without having a physical box in cloud environments to provide firewalls, routing, etc. Once you start to see everything as just inter-related software systems with the same hardware guts, certain rules and regulations get kinda funny and sad.

    4 votes
  4. Fiachra
    Link
    Man, I love hacky stuff like this and I know how to code, but I have no idea where I would get the foundational knowledge to start messing with networking devices like this.

    Man, I love hacky stuff like this and I know how to code, but I have no idea where I would get the foundational knowledge to start messing with networking devices like this.

    4 votes