With all the gov’t attacks on privacy these days I’ve been thinking about getting my own router. I’ve never done it and am pretty new to network stuff overall. I certainly welcome any recommendations for routers but I mainly have a stupid question:
Is it as simple as just swapping out the isp router? I’ve disconnected anything I had exposed to the internet and use LAN only right now so none of my old port forwarding rules are needed.


Man I need to get off my ass and do that. I almost did last year but then some news dropped about firmware backdoors discovered in some routers, and I got scared lol.
To anyone else like me who wants to do it, there is a big list of supported hw by OpenWRT here. Also you can click around, they have listings for other mfgs.
That’s weird; the “firmware backdoor” thing ought to have incentivized you to go for OpenWRT even more, not scared you off. OpenWRT is the solution to untrustworthy manufacturer-provided firmware!
Yes, you are certainly right. At least as far as the firmware goes. But then I started thinking about how powerful the incentive is, to compromise hardware too, or other components that run their own separate firmware that isn’t the one you can replace with OpenWRT. Although I have no evidence of that happening, so I’m prob just too tinfoil hatty about it.
But yah. You make a good point. I shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
This is great thank you