Hardware recommendations for running OpenSense as a Firewall?

2026-07-01 21:58 UTC

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!

Replies (2)

@libretech@reddthat.com 2026-07-02 03:13

I was going through this process about a year ago. I ended up settling on the Protectli V1410 (Intel N5105 and 4 Intel I226-V 2.5Gbps ports) because: a) I wanted coreboot, b) I was a little wary of lesser-known Ali Express sellers c) Protectli seemed like a decent company and I felt good about supporting people investing in an open source firmware (minus proprietary blobs which you can’t do much about). None of that was strictly necessary, and you probably would be fine just going with a cheaper NUC or mini PC. I would definitely second some of the other comments on avoiding Realtek NICs though.

Open ##3684946
@thelittleblackbird@lemmy.world 2026-07-02 18:12

Take a sophos second hand FW. Intel nic, low power consumption processors and full opnsense support. Go at least for 4gb ram and the most powerful processor you can safely get. It will come with a lot of eth ports too on top. And it will cost close to 100€, probably less if you struck a good deal

Open ##3724787