Commercial Routers Suck

Since I've been burned with commercial routers numerous times over the years, I want to make the most of investing another $300. I want something to work for a long time and work reliably.

I started with a Shuttle DS67U, it has fairly decent hardware and powerful enough for a router. The most important part is dual NICs (one for Internet, one for local area network or LAN) and a built-in wireless adapter (also for LAN, well WLAN). The NICs are 1GB and the wireless is ac/b/g/n. The full specs are:

• Processor: Intel Celeron Processor 3855U - 1.60GHz

• Memory: 4GB DDR3L-1600MHz SODIMM Notebook Memory

• Hard Drive: 120GB 2.5" SATA SSD

• Wireless: Realtek 802.11 ac/b/g/n Bluetooth 4.0 WLAN

• NIC: Dual Intel, 1 x I219-LM, 1 x I211

The next question is what do I run on the hardware. I need an OS that does all the things a router does. Professionally I use Untangle, but it had trouble recognizing both NICs (as of 2016). I did install Ubuntu, which recognized both NICs, but managing it as a router was a bit too "grey beardish" for me and my household. There is also pfSense, but I'm way more familiar with Linux.

In the end, I went with IPFire. I had more thoughts to put up here, as a sorta mini-review. But I don't have lots of time. IPFire works great as router and wireless access point. Their updates come quite regularly; usually every 3 months or so. It has a great webUI for managing everything, and have sophisticated features beyond the typical home-user. They also have a ton of Add-ons, if you want more features or to make your device multi-purpose (print server, backup, NAS, etc.).