this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
29 points (100.0% liked)

Selfhosted

60533 readers
931 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Detailed Rules Post

  1. Be civil.

  2. No spam.

  3. Posts are to be related to self-hosting.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title.

  6. No trolling.

  7. Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details.

  8. AI-related discussions and AI-involved promotional posts have additional requirements for tagging, as noted in Rule 7 and the AI & Promotional Post Expanded Rules post.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Hiya, looking the a firewall for my homelab, mostly to experiment but also for a added layer of security. There are just two of us in this household with a few laptops, phones and my servers, so nothing much. Therefore looking for something affordable and not "overkill".

Anyone got any recommendations for this? Also how do you run your opensense/pfsense instance?

Appreciate any tips!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] yannic@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

You don't mention your throughput requirements. How fast is your internet connection? Will you be a VPN server and/or VPN client? A reverse proxy? All that adds overhead but really not that much compared to other services. It just changes your requirements as to how many years obsolete your hardware can be.

Generally, whatever desktops or laptops businesses are throwing out in the trash will be more than enough.

If you have a managed network switch or one that can do VLANs, a router on a stick will work fine, especially if your Internet connection isn't more than half the speed of your server's network card. A repurposed laptop is perfect for this, because it has a built-in UPS and console!

One thing I did learn the hard way is that a lot of consumer "smart" devices wrongly assume to be on the same broadcast domain as any servers, clients, or peers they talk to, so even with avahi handling relaying between VLANs, they won't work. It's annoying having to move your dishwasher off the IoT VLAN just to make it work.