I discovered OpenWRT firmware back in 2005 when I was looking to get better bandwidth monitoring and QoS control on my router. No Quality of Service and traffic shaping, making all traffic equal - no matter if it is a video call, Xbox game, web browsing or smart TV sending telemetry to China.

Built-in switch spams all Ethernet ports with minimal or no control, making traffic storms on all physical ports and often on Wifi as well.

Minimal or no IPv6 support - even from ISPs that offer IPv6 addresses.

Router logic can’t understand source-based routing, preventing intelligent routing of traffic based on which device generated the request.

Firewall control and filtering rules are very basic, opening the internal network to a whole bunch of possible surprises.

Let me first review what is wrong with common consumer networking routers and why should you care: If you care for your home, you should invest in better home networking equipment.

So, if you are nerdy enough to read blogs titled “ How I discovered OPNSense”, you should be nerdy enough to not settle for the simplest and cheapest networking box.

Well, not just somewhere you have to compromise EVERYWHERE. I mean, if you try to squeeze functionality of a firewall, router, switch and a wifi access point into a single cheap plastic box, you have to compromise somewhere. Home networking has been my passion and obsession ever since I realized that the default all-in-one boxes that ISPs are loaning to us for low, low $10 or so per month don’t meet even the most basic geek needs.

Protectli router