If you have some old PC parts in the closet, or are willing to spend a little cash on a small form-factor PC like an Intel NUC, you can build a router that whips the shit out of anything you've ever bought at the store. All you need is some modest hardware and open source routing software called pfSense.
It might sound or look intimidating, but it's actually really easy to set up, and easier to troubleshoot than any store-bought router I've ever owned. A recent study said that ditching your ISP's shitty wireless router will make you happier.
But building your own super router is true bliss. A few months ago I upgraded to to a gigabit fiber connection, and initially seemed to be getting close to true gigabit speeds.
But the problems started to pile up. Even over Ethernet, downloading games from Steam didn't go nearly as fast as I knew Steam's servers could handle. Worse, for some reason downloading a game, even at mbps, would often tank the entire home network. Something had to change. Also, I've been stuck at home for four months, and every time I start to go stir crazy I overreact to the first thing that frustrates me by fixing it in the most elaborate way possible.
I'd already bought a bunch of new plants and re-caulked my kitchen sink, so here we are. When we talk about routers, we're pretty much always talking about wi-fi routers. They're essentially low-power computers built to do just one thing—control network traffic—and they have antennas that beam your data over the 2. But the wi-fi is actually extra functionality. The bedrock thing here is the routing. I didn't build a wi-fi router. I built a PC that can do a better job of directing traffic around my network, and turned my old wi-fi router into an access point—basically taking away all of its responsibilities except passing along information to wireless devices.
Think of it this way: Your router is basically like a traffic cop in the middle of an intersection that splits off to a thousand different roads, and it has to know instantly what traffic should go where, and it has to do that job without ever slowing down or getting confused, forever. That's easy if you have four cars driving through the intersection at a reasonable 30 miles per hour—in this analogy that would be, like, a desktop PC running a game, a Roku streaming p Netflix, a laptop just browsing and a smartphone playing Instagram stories.
That traffic cop isn't even breaking a sweat. But what if you have a dozen cars all at once, and one of the cars crossing the intersection is an impossibly long stretch limousine a big Steam download gobbling up hundreds of mbps while another car traveling back and forth at miles per hour demands a clear intersection or it'll wreck a Zoom video conference. Now that traffic cop is starting to sweat. Most store-bought routers just can't handle that kind of load, especially when it comes to gigabit speeds.
Building your own router is basically upgrading from this traffic cop:. There are other factors, but the big difference here is the CPU at the heart of your router. My new router is powered by a vastly more powerful CPU, a quad-core Intel i running at 3. It's absolutely overkill , but that's what I was going for. Also, I would like to point out that directing traffic is just one of many public services police officers should probably not perform, which is why we should defund the police and redistribute their colossal budgets back into communities.
PfSense is free, open source router software that you can install on pretty much any PC hardware you have lying around. The last release was in , and the system is ancient by today's standards. The official website is dead, but the source code is still out there. Don't use it. Smoothwall got some good reputation in the early days when it was competing with IPCop. It went silent in Smoothwall OS has been abandoned and is no longer relevant, or secure.
You should avoid it. The website is still up and running, but hasn't been updated in many years. It certainly was back in the day. It's mostly unchanged since and fell far behind other open source competitors. Today there are many good alternatives, such as OpenWRT. M0n0wall is the godfather of the most successful operating systems we have today. It's been one of the most innovative projects in its day, but it's now retired.
System hasn't received any updates since early and is officially abandoned. Tomato is cool, and we love it, but it's a minimal firmware designed for flashing off-the-shelf routers such as D-Link and Asus.
The system is still relevant if you want to resurrect your old hardware and make it functional again, but if you are building a new router you probably don't want to use tomato on it. We are building powerful routers from scratch, so we generally don't use this system we still love it. We like the concept of Zeroshell, and we hope it succeeds, but today the system is far behind it's competitors. The Web UI is very rudimentary, and the functionality is limited. We will keep an eye on it, and update this recommendation if things change.
The website hasn't been updated since , so at the moment this project doesn't look promising. There are other systems that are relevant, and receive updates, but we still don't recommend them, at least to less technical users.
We don't recomment the below systems, because they require relatively high expertise to perform simple tasks. For these reasons we don't recommend the following systems:. We love VyOS, but we highly discourage our customers from getting it, unless they really know what they are doing. This system must be managed from command line, and it requires high level of expertise to maintain and use. OpenBSD and FreeBSD are actively developed and are very capable, but these systems require a high level of understanding of operating system internals, and low-level networking to be used as routers.
We routinely install both systems for customers that are experts, such as network administrators or software developers. If you don't want to mess with system internals and spend hours reading manuals, this is not a system for you. It's a barebones terminal based system. These systems are not intended for routers. They are general purpose operating systems, and should not really be used as routers.
There are also a few systems we don't recommend because they are not truly free or open source. Untangle NG Firewall is truly great software, with many happy users. We don't recommend it because the free version is very limited, and the operating system constantly incentivizes the users to upgrade to a paid subscription to unlock the cool functionality.
Sophos "XG Firewall" distribution has a very nice user interface and is free for home use. We generally don't recommend it because it's not a system that Sophos itself promotes. Like other similar software, this software also requires a simple configuration in which you need to specify the network name and password. After the configuration, you can share your internet with other devices by clicking on its Start Hosted Network button. This software offers WPA2 security for authentication which is another handy feature of this software.
In general, it is a really good and stable virtual router software for Windows. My WiFi Hotspot is a free and easy to use virtual router software for Windows. With the use of this software, you can create a WiFi hotspot and share your internet with one or more devices at a time. To be precise, this software can share internet with upto nearby devices at a time. In it, you can easily create a WiFi hotspot by providing the network name , password , and by pressing the Start WiFi button.
Apart from creating a virtual router, you can also view various information regarding the WiFi network like Driver Number , Authentication Details , Cipher Details , Status Channel , and more. Virtual Router Manager is a free virtual router software for Windows. Using it, you can easily convert your system into an internet sharing virtual router through which you can share your internet with other nearby devices like smartphones , laptops , etc.
Internet shared by this software is secured with WPA2 security and every device needs to provide the correct password in order to connect with your system. Once connected, nearby devices can use the internet without hindering your network speed. Setting up this software is quite simple and just by specifying the network name and password , you can start sharing your internet with other devices.
Maryfi is another free virtual router software for Windows. With the help of this software, you can create a WiFi hotspot and share internet with nearby devices Tablets, Smartphones, etc. In order to create a hotspot, first, specify the WiFi Name and Password. After that, use its view network connection option to view which connection you are sharing with others.
Once the setup gets finished, press the Start Hotspot button to create a personal hotspot. In general, it is a simple and straightforward virtual router software that anyone can use with ease. Internet Sharing is another free virtual router software through which you can quickly and easily share your internet with other devices.
To share the internet, this software creates a virtual router in your system with which multiple nearby WiFi enabled devices can connect and use the internet. However, before sharing the internet, you need to perform standard configuration in which you need to specify network name and password.
After successful creation of virtual connection, you can view the upload and download speeds of connected devices along with the amount of combined data used by connected devices. Overall, it is another simple and straightforward virtual router software for sharing your internet with others with ease. Baidu WiFi Hotspot is the next free virtual router software for Windows.
Using this software, you can create virtual router and share internet with nearby devices. However, this software can do more than just sharing the internet like sending and receiving files from nearby laptops and phones through WiFi.
On Windows, this software uses the ICS method for internet sharing which is quite reliable and quick to connect with other devices. Jiveshwar Hotspot is another completely free virtual router software for Windows.
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