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.
I did this back in the days of Smoothwall, ~20 years ago. I used an old, dedicated PC, with 2 PCI NICs.
It was complicated, and took a long time to setup properly. It was loud and used a lot of power, and didn’t give me much beyond the standard $50 routers of the day (and is easily eclipsed by the standard $80 routers of today). But it ran reliably for a number of years without any interaction.
I also didn’t learn anything useful that I could ever apply to something else, so ended up just being a waste of time. 2/10, spend your time on something more useful.