Mmm, Pi-hole - Hackdot

Re:Mmm, Pi-hole by aurelian15 on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @11:29AM (#18076935)

Not really an off-the shelf consumer router, but since you want to install custom firmware anyways, you might want to consider the PC-Engines APU2 board [1]. You can either install any "normal" desktop x86_64 Linux distribution or a specialized router OS such as OpenWrt [2]. The AMD APU on the board supports hardware virtualisation, so you're able to run several VMs via KVM to isolate the services the router is providing.

Of course this board doesn't come with the features of a fully-fledged consumer router, such as built-in DSL/DOCSIS modem, DECT, WiFi, etc, so your mileage may vary. It comes with 3 independent Ethernet ports and 3 mPCIe slots though.

[1] http://pcengines.ch/apu2.htm [2] https://openwrt.org/toh/pcengines/apu2

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Re:Mmm, Pi-hole by __david__ on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @01:02PM (#18077970)

I second this. I've been running PC engines stuff for a few years and it's great. I currently have an APU and it handles my gigabit fiber no problem. I use a separate off-the-shelf wireless router in bridge mode which let's me upgrade that independent of the PC engines (wireless hardware tech moves faster than router hardware tech).

I run openwrt on it and use the "adblock" package which works like pi-hole (minus the nice web stats). Having it be a plain x86 CPU is nice—For example, I compiled Telegraf on my local Linux machine (since openwrt doesn't have a package for it) and was able to just drop it on with minimal problems.

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Re:Mmm, Pi-hole by Arbalest on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @08:05PM (#18081280)

Unfortunately it does not come with 3 mPCIe slots, the one furthest to the left is an mSATA port.

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Re:Mmm, Pi-hole by givinguflac on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @10:34AM (#18076323)

I’ve been running the mid to high end Asus routers for years now and am very happy with them. Running wrt-Merlin firmware and AB-Solution via entware is everything I need and doesn’t complicate things with additional devices like pi-hole.

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Re:Mmm, Pi-hole by ryandrake on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @11:35AM (#18076989)

Yes, this is my preference as well. You can also run a vpn with this setup (as you can with other custom firmwares) so you can take advantage of this adblocking from outside your home.

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Re:Mmm, Pi-hole by ronjouch on Thursday September 27, 2018 @08:02AM (#18083653)

The TP-Link Archer C7 AC1750. https://openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/archer-c5-c7-wdr7500

I was looking for an openwrt-compatible router a few weeks ago, this is 2018's consensual cheap & able & easy-to-install router. It's easily the most frequently recommended home router for openwrt these days. And yes, openwrt's Adblock package is awesome.

And to come back to your original question, to do your own research, I recommend you search/ask on https://www.reddit.com/r/openwrt/ and https://forum.openwrt.org/ , it's a question that pops up frequently.

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Re:Mmm, Pi-hole by wsy on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @10:51AM (#18076512)

Netgear R7800 and any other router with the same Qualcomm chipset work great with OpenWRT.

Take care that the router has a boot mode which allows you to overwrite the firmware via TFTP. That comes in handy in case of trouble with a particular firmware version (e.g., router stuck in a boot loop).

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Re:Mmm, Pi-hole by windexh8er on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @10:28AM (#18076258)

https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_864

edit: link to OpenWRT with a list of supported hardware that is relevant to the parent's question

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Re:Mmm, Pi-hole by creeble on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @10:27AM (#18076248)

I buy my routers from flashrouters.com. A little overpriced, but I trust them and their testing. I have the Asus N16rt (I think) running shibby tomato and it's great.

Despite this, I run pi-hole on an RPi that I have done so much as a reboot on in two years.

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Re:Mmm, Pi-hole by tombrossman on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @03:08PM (#18079248)

It may be more full-featured than you are looking for, but have a look at the Turris Omnia. It is extremely customisable and you can add an internal SSD to run LXC containers on (including one running Pi-hole, which is what I do).

Not cheap, and sometimes unforgiving if you don't know exactly what you are doing, but worth every penny in my opinion.

https://omnia.turris.cz/en/

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Re:Mmm, Pi-hole by voltagex_ on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @08:02PM (#18081269)

Have you had any issues with the auto updater? I got rid of my Omnia after an auto-update broke DNS while I was away from home.

Ironically, went to Unifi after reading Troy's blogs about it - now regretting it immensely as the hardware is nowhere near as powerful as the Omnia.

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Re:Mmm, Pi-hole by tombrossman on Thursday September 27, 2018 @03:46PM (#18087925)

This happened to me too, and what I learned is that the Omnia uses the Knot DNS resolver, which re-enables itself after updates and this breaks everything if you have made certain customisations.

The fix is to disable this with "echo 'Uninstall("knot-resolver", { priority = 60 })' >> /etc/updater/conf.d/user.lua" over SSH so it stays disabled. You can do this for any service you modified or disabled, and the documentation barely mentions this (it's a real showstopper bug until you diagnose it - no connectivity whatsoever).

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Re:Mmm, Pi-hole by kdot on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @10:30AM (#18076275)

I’ve been also searching for recommendations, particularly on a custom firmware router that allows me to host a VPN server.

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Re:Mmm, Pi-hole by paxswill on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @09:17PM (#18081517)

It’ll be more involved for you to set up, but pfSense is what I use. I basically forget it’s there until I want to change something (add a new VPN user, monitor bandwidth usage). I’ve set up an IPSec VPN that works well with my Apple devices, especially with a configuration profile that enables on demand VPN (connect via VPN when certain conditions are met, like not on my home WiFi). For hardware I use a cheapish “industrial” computer from AliExpress. Probably not the best thing security-wise (no firmware updates in the past few years, it feels like it’s just shipped directly from a random factory in China), but it’s been great so far.

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Re:Mmm, Pi-hole by pdimitar on Thursday September 27, 2018 @06:34PM (#18089439)

How do you instruct an iPhone or iPad to use VPN when you are not connected to your home Wi-Fi? I used their former Workflow automation app (now dubbed Shortcuts in iOS12) and it did allow reacting to such an event (going out of range of 1 or more wi-fi networks) but did not realize one of the possible actions was to be able to enable VPN.

Was that what you used? Or was it something else?

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