Building my own router.

[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.

[GeorgePatches]

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

When I set it up, there was em0 and ac1?

also, ac1 doesn't sound right. Maybe alc0?

https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?apropos=1&manpath=freebsd-release-ports&query=Atheros

Should be something here, might be a simple typo on your initial setup.

The pciconf -lv output steve is asking for will definitely help him steer you in the right direction.

[GeorgePatches]

@Master-Henry It occurs to me that you're trying to do this on the console screen of this machine and text might be flying off the screen faster than your can read. Try this.

pciconf -lv | less

This will let you scroll through the output until you find the bit you want. Press q when finished to get back to the command prompt.

[Master Henry]

@GeorgePatches @stephenw10

Hey Guys, so em0 is Intel I217-V LPT and alc0 is Atheros Ar8161 PCIe Gigabit. So Atheros works but not Intel. I switched both the Onboard ethernet ports to use WAN. Only Atheros is recognizing link. Intel keeps saying DOWN. Maybe I got a busted port?

[stephenw10]

Great so both NICs are detected and have drivers attached.

How are you testing?

Try running: ifconfig em0

That will report the link state and settings.

[Master Henry]

@stephenw10

Stephen,

WAN -> em0 -> ipaddress

I have a ethernet cable connected to my PC and still nothing. Nothing LAN.