Beyond Two Cans and a String: A practical guide to building a home router

Audience:

Home routers are ubiquitous hardware, but are not an excellent platform for hacking, and are generally very limited in what services or unusual use cases they can support. After struggling for several years with recalcitrant SOHO routers, and even some cheaper commercial routers, Ben started to consider replacing his inadequate routers with a full Linux machine with some extra NICs. This talk will cover the choices a home sysadmin can make when considering building a custom router for their homelab. We'll compare use cases for available form-factors, while also highlighting what constraints can be relaxed when picking equipment. After looking at purely hardware, we'll dive into the choices available for software, highlighting one for the purpose of discussion, but addressing available variations and alternatives. After discussing possibilities, there will be a lab component that will cover setting up a simple router setup forwarding a service.

Room:
Room 211
Time:
Sunday, March 8, 2020 - 13:00 to 15:30