Building my own router.

[Master Henry]

Hey guys. I am getting started on building my own router with pfsense.

This motherboard.
GA-Z87N-WIFI Gigabyte Intel Motherboard

Will need to purchase a NIC or would this motherboard be fine?

[provels]

@Master-Henry Run what ya brung. Wired NICs will probably be OK, Wi-Fi may not. FreeBSD hostap (access point) mode has an affinity for older Atheros or Ralink NICs for wireless. But try anyway. Routing isn't terribly processor intensive for home use, so an i3 should be fine. But cobble together whatever you can to start, great starting point. HTH

EDIT - OK, here's the wireless, Intel. No good for access point. But you could replace it with one of these half-size Atheros AR9280 cards EBay and you'd have G or N wireless. Maybe not the best, but working.

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[GeorgePatches]

@Master-Henry said in Building my own router.:

This motherboard.
GA-Z87N-WIFI Gigabyte Intel Motherboard

Will need to purchase a NIC or would this motherboard be fine?

I see 2 potential problems here. Gigabyte doesn't really tell us what the wired NICs actually are. Just "Intel" and "Atheros". The Intel wired NIC has a 99% chance of working, the other one I have no idea. Or are you planning to be wifi only?

The other problem I see is that this is an Intel 4th gen. This is going to be power hungry for what it is, probably 50 watts all the time. I don't know what your electrical costs are, but that's around 40kWhr a month. For me that's like an extra $8, for someone in California that's easily 3-4 times as much. Just don't want you to be surprised next month when your power bill is up.

[stephenw10]

Yup, if you don't already have that board I wouldn't choose it.

Pretty much no point have a WiFi NIC.

Atheros Ethernet NICs have a mixed reputation.

Something far less power hungry than that would probably be fine. Though you haven't said what throughput you need. Or if you plan to use VPNs etc.

Steve

[provels]

@Master-Henry I guess it kind of depends what you want to do. If you just want to just DATE pfSense and not MARRY it (yet), cobble together with what you have and get your feet wet. The industrial PC cast-off in my sig pulls <30w with a Gen4 i7, 16GB, 2 Atheros Wi-Fi cards, 4 - GB LAN, an SSD and a HDD. Most of the time it's just loafing at 800MHz. But that's me.

Or if you just want a toaster, there's always the Netgate 1100! :) That just wouldn't be any fun for me AT ALL! LOL

[Master Henry]

@provels @stephenw10 @GeorgePatches Thank you all for replying!

So basically, I currently have a Linksys Hydra Pro 6E and I use my router primarily for web and gaming. A bunch of gaming hardware. Just myself. I looked at YouTube and researched online. Switching to building my own router because I want the performance. I feel the consumer router is slow for web and gaming and I keep mostly getting killed/pwned/owned in competitive online gaming for example Rainbow Six Siege. I have some spare parts laying and thought to give it a go building my own router. Power is not an issue. For CPU, I have an Intel i5-4670 laying around. 16GB DDR3. For my Linksys router, I am thinking of bridging and in the future maybe upgrade to a MESH network. I have Verizon Fios. What do you guys think?

[stephenw10]

If you already have the parts then, sure, give them a go. Nothing to lose.

What is your WAN bandwidth?

[Master Henry]

@stephenw10 1 gigabit? but may need to downgrade as my internet contract is about to expire.

[stephenw10]

Ah, well that CPU will be significantly over powered for that. But it should work fine.

[GeorgePatches]

@Master-Henry Is your gaming stuff currently WiFi or wired? As others have said already, your old hardware will work fine. It's a great way to dip your toe in the serious network equipment game.

The non-Intel NIC might give you some trouble, but you can cross that bridge if you come to it. Old gigabit Intel stuff is available all over the internet for pennies on the dollar.

Good luck.

[GeorgePatches]

@Master-Henry Oh, also if you're only using wifi right now, I'd strongly suggest trying wired connections before you change anything else. WiFi is the latency devil. I actually just spent a lot of my day and evening digging through settings in my pfsense box to try and fix something that was ultimately a wifi issue.

[Master Henry]

@GeorgePatches Absolutely WIRED all the way!

[Master Henry]

@stephenw10 @GeorgePatches @provels

Hey guys, I went ahead, was able to find and bought a H97 itx motherboard instead. My question is that that Dual Ethernet port. Can I use it as a WAN and LAN? Do I need to buy an Intel NIC card?

[stephenw10]

If the board has two onboard NICs you can use them for WAN and LAN. You only need an addition NIC if you need more interfaces or if, for some reason, either of those NICs is not supported by pfSense.

[Master Henry]

@stephenw10

Thank you Stephen.

[Master Henry]

@stephenw10 @stephenw10 @provels

Hey guys, I have everything and pfsense is set up. I can't get into my address. I have WAN but No LAN ip address. The first ethernet is Intel and the second is Atheros. I assume that I need to get a NIC card for this? Am I missing something?

[stephenw10]

You mean you don't see the NIC available at all? Or it just doesn't have an IP address?

If you run pciconf -lv at the command line what does it show up as?

[Master Henry]

@stephenw10

Hey Stephen, so same thing. I only see my WAN IP address. No LAN. When I set it up, there was em0 and ac1? I was thinking that if it works that I can run a CAT cable on the 2nd ethernet port on my motherboard and then through a Linksys unmanaged switch and then connect all my other Ethernet cables for my hardware. It looks like it doesn't support. Am I doing something wrong, or should I try something else?

In case I need to a buy a NIC card, what do you recommend and will these NIC cards from ebay work?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/176359531225

https://www.ebay.com/itm/144068616517

[GeorgePatches]

@Master-Henry said in Building my own router.:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/176359531225

This one will not work, it's not a standard PCIe card. Looks like something custom for a specific server.

@Master-Henry said in Building my own router.:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/144068616517

This one would work, but that is a VERY old card. I'd keep looking for something that at least starts with an I. Like the I22x, or something. Anything where the chipset starts with 82xxx is super old. It's what I currently run, but it's a VERY old appliance I'm using.

[stephenw10]

Both those should work fine.

But the Atheros NIC will probably work. What does it look like in the pciconf -lv output? It will be there and show the PCI IDs even if no driver is attached.