I tried getting into the nerdy side. I have an old PC with only one NIC, but apparently it needs two in order to bridge to a WiFi AP? That makes sense, but I don’t have an old PC with two NICs. Also, my NIC doesn’t support as much bandwidth as I have supplied anyhow. Sad times.
Edit: the desktop is old enough that the mobo doesn’t have the slots I need. Effectively, I have to get a new old burner PC. It’s an old ThinkCentre with a dvd player built in.
Well ya, you need at least two NICs to properly setup a firewall. Additionally, since NICs are the most crucial piece of hardware for routers and firewalls, it’ll only be as good as the hardware it runs on. Older NICs lead to regular crashes and/or slow network speeds. So swapping the original NIC out and adding another is VERY typical when repurposing old PCs as a router. The most common options for NICs I’ve seen are the Intel I350-T2 and I350-T4. Ironically, they cost about as much as a decent router, but going this route actually puts you in control of your home network!
you need at least two NICs to properly setup a firewall.
I’m not sure I’d recommend it, but two (or more) VLANs on a single NIC would work fine too. This setup is usually referred to as “router on a stick”
I’m not sure about other OSes or Linux distros, but it’s easy to add multiple VLANs on Debian. You load the 8021q kernel module, then add interfaces suffixed with the VLAN ID (e.g. if your NIC is ens3, you’d add ens3.10 to /etc/network/interfaces for VLAN 10). You’d also need to make sure the switch port is configured to allow VLAN10.
Older NICs lead to regular crashes and/or slow network speeds.
but the ones you’re suggesting (I350-T2 and -T4) are 12 years old.
I tried getting into the nerdy side. I have an old PC with only one NIC, but apparently it needs two in order to bridge to a WiFi AP? That makes sense, but I don’t have an old PC with two NICs. Also, my NIC doesn’t support as much bandwidth as I have supplied anyhow. Sad times.
Edit: the desktop is old enough that the mobo doesn’t have the slots I need. Effectively, I have to get a new old burner PC. It’s an old ThinkCentre with a dvd player built in.
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If it’s a desktop PC you can buy a PCIe card with multiple Ethernet ports pretty cheap, especially if you buy used.
USB network cards are even cheaper than PCIE if you don’t mind lower performance (if you don’t have USB3 ports you’re limited to theoretical 480Mbit)
Well ya, you need at least two NICs to properly setup a firewall. Additionally, since NICs are the most crucial piece of hardware for routers and firewalls, it’ll only be as good as the hardware it runs on. Older NICs lead to regular crashes and/or slow network speeds. So swapping the original NIC out and adding another is VERY typical when repurposing old PCs as a router. The most common options for NICs I’ve seen are the Intel I350-T2 and I350-T4. Ironically, they cost about as much as a decent router, but going this route actually puts you in control of your home network!
I’m not sure I’d recommend it, but two (or more) VLANs on a single NIC would work fine too. This setup is usually referred to as “router on a stick”
I’m not sure about other OSes or Linux distros, but it’s easy to add multiple VLANs on Debian. You load the
8021qkernel module, then add interfaces suffixed with the VLAN ID (e.g. if your NIC isens3, you’d addens3.10to /etc/network/interfaces for VLAN 10). You’d also need to make sure the switch port is configured to allow VLAN10.but the ones you’re suggesting (I350-T2 and -T4) are 12 years old.