Hello selfhosted.

My router just burnt up and instead of buying a new one, I’m thinking of turning my own built NAS/home server into a router. Is this possible?

The server in question is a normal computer running debian, where I have a few disks in RAID and host some web services. The motherboard only has one RJ45 port, so my guess is that I have to at least get a network card that supports 2 ports. I’m no stranger to linux but physical networking is not my home field, though I’m very interested.

If someone could point me in the right direction, I would be more than happy.

  • @rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15•1 day ago

    You can use OPNSense inside a virtual machine. You can use QEMU or install the Proxmox toolkit over Debian to manage it. I’ve been using this setup for years without issue.

    You’ll have to create a bridge network for the WAN and the LAN interface, connect them to the VM, then configure the virtual interfaces inside OPNSense.

    • @Dultas@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2•19 hours ago

      Only issue I’ve had with this setup is if you’re running in a cluster and you have to restart the cluster then you run into a deadlock. The cluster won’t start VMs without a quorum and it can’t form a quorum without the OPNSense VM up. So you have to manually intervene.

    • @Toralv@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      5•1 day ago

      Ah I see, did not think of that. A network card with two ports would be enough right? One for the modem, and the other for clients, which ideally could be a switch, for more ports. That’s possible right?

      • @rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8•1 day ago

        Yes, that will be enough. You can also use a single port on the NIC and the one on the motherboard if it can handle the ethernet speed you want.

        This is my network setup on Proxmox:

        vmbr0 is a bridge that has a single port going to the modem. The OPNSense VM’s first virtual interface is connected to this and configured as a WAN interface. Nothing else connects to this bridge as it is exposed to the internet.

        vmbr1 also has a single port that goes to the physical switch. OPNSense’s second interface connects to it as a LAN port, as well as every other VM and container running on the server.