Although we have many types of networking equipment with many unique names, at their core they can usually be reduced to just a computer with some specific peripherals. This is especially the case for something like a router, a device found in just about any home these days. Certain consumer-grade routers may contain something special like a VDSL modem, but most of them just have a WAN Ethernet jack on one end and one or more LAN-facing Ethernet ports.All further functionality is implemented in software, including any firewall, routing and DHCP features. What this means is that any old PC with at least two Ethernet ports or equivalent can be a router as long as you install the appropriate software.In this article we’ll be taking a look at what consumer-level options there exist here today, ideally something so simple that the average home user could set it up with a bit of coaching.When Routers Were TerribleStart-up screen of FreeSCO. (Credit: Lewis “Lightning” Baughman, Wikimedia)Although these days most people are probably happy to use whatever consumer router gets tossed their way by their ISP or purchased from any of the many electronics retailers, the era of home routers starting in the 90s was a rough one. Not only did many ISPs for a long time have strict rules against even thinking of installing any kind of connection-sharing router on the precious internet connection they so gracefully provided access to, the routers that were available even during the 2000s also weren’t particularly good.Perhaps the most egregious issue that you’d run into as a somewhat internet-savvy user was that these units came with the tiniest amount of RAM and a routing table that would fill up within seconds if you so much as thought of doing anything naughty like downloading Linux ISOs with Bittorrent. Even more than the lightest internet use risked issues such as the router freezing up and requiring a reboot.Being the nerdy type who’d hang out on various tech forums during that time, I instead opted to toss some ISA NICs into an old 486DX2-66 PC, put FreeSCO on a 1.44 MB floppy and used that instead. Even the 16 MB or so of EDO or FP RAM in that old system easily kept up with whatever internet traffic-related abuse I threw at it along with the rest of the family.Later I’d also use Smoothwall on a trashed Pentium 166 system that I had salvaged from e-waste as a healthy upgrade. Yet over time as consumer routers stopped being terrible, I’d end up using those instead. That said, despite recent improvements there are still reasons today to put your own router together.These reasons can vary from a simple increase in control, as well as peace of mind in an era where commercial consumer router firmware do not appear to get quite the quality assurance they should get. There is also the specter of repressive government policies, and of course less dramatic reasons such as just being into tinkering with networking gear.Modern OptionsAlthough we have moved on quite a few years from the 2000s, it’d be nice if we could still theoretically dig an ancient 486 PC out of a closet and use it, just to push back the minimum requirements as far as possible. Looking at the list of router and firewall distributions over at Wikipedia we can get a bit of an idea of what’s out there today. Naturally we’d like something that’s open source, recently updated and well-supported as we’ll be exposing it to the worst that the modern Internet has to offer.Sadly, FreeSCO isn’t even the list, and based on the project’s website it doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2014. Similarly, Smoothwall’s free version (Express) doesn’t appear to be quite supported any more, with the commercial offering being promoted instead. A promising project is something like OPNsense, which is a FreeBSD-based distribution that does basically everything networking-related and then some. It’s also rather resource-heavy, demanding 4+ GB of RAM and so on, for features that the average home user is unlikely to use.Ultimately only two projects really jump out: the first is the Linux Embedded Appliance Framework (LEAF), which feels like a spiritual successor to FreeSCO in targeting 486 or better hardware while running read-only off floppy discs or better.The second project is the well-known OpenWrt, which doesn’t just provide alternative firmware images for commercial routers, but also for generic x86 and ARM hardware. This should tick all the aforementioned boxes, including the ability to run off an x86-compatible potato, while theoretically also providing driver support for just about any NIC and maybe even WNICs.Amusingly, my current internet router is a Xiaomi device that runs OpenWrt with a custom web UI, so I’m already familiar with it in that sense. I also have no complaints about its stability, so this should be smooth sailing as a first try.A quick sidenote here: although I did say that consumer-grade routers aren’t terrible any more today, this Xiaomi router replaced a horrid TP-Link Archer C80 with its tiny 4 MB Flash, incompatibility with OpenWrt and broken IPv6 support. Caveat emptor, as they say, for consumer-grade routers can absolutely still be terrible.It’s Not Hoarding, I SwearLike any self-respecting tech-enthusiast I happen to have a few drawers and boxes with relevant computer hardware, including a stash of industrial Intel Atom mini-ITX boards and some PCI Gbit NICs. Although I could have tossed this into a scruffy old case with a questionably-but-probably-fine PSU, I decided to get a new budget case and PSU, just to feel more confident about flipping on the power switch:With the powers of e-waste and non-sketchy PSUs combined… a DIY router. (Credit: Maya Posch)The mainboard is a 2009-era Intel Desktop Board D410PT, with two sticks of 1 GB DDR2 RAM. There’s just an onboard 10/100 Mbit Ethernet adapter in addition to the PCI 1 Gbit adapter, but this is good enough to test basic principles. Plus older Ethernet chips definitely ought to be supported.With this whole kit built together, the OpenWrt Wiki entry on x86 installations was followed, with an Ext4-based non-EFI image written to a 512 MB microSD card. This card was inserted into the system with a USB adapter, though as the Wiki page makes clear there are many more ways to install OpenWrt, including on an internal (SATA/IDE/etc.) storage device.Here the OpenWrt image selection process is definitely a bit more complicated than that for e.g. FreeSCO, as you have to know whether the system boots using a UEFI or traditional BIOS, as well as decide between the SquashFS and Ext4 root partition option. Even after looking at the pros and cons of both I’m still torn on which one is best.There is also the issue of supported network cards, with the typical image supporting Intel and Realtek Ethernet chipsets. Having compatible NICs installed is even more important than back in the generic NE2000 days.Sad TromboneAfter firing up the newly built rig and briefly powering it down to replace the very much drained CMOS battery, I had hoped to see something promising on the connected screen. Yet other than the PXE boot attempts from both Ethernet cards before a sad ‘no bootable devices found’ error message nothing happened.I did go through the BIOS to make sure that all ‘boot from USB’ options were enabled and tried multiple SD-card-to-USB adapters in multiple USB ports, but it would seem that either the provided OpenWrt image isn’t bootable or the Curse of Bootable USB Devices has struck again.While I haven’t given up yet on DIY-ing an x86 router on older hardware in 2026 and still have to give LEAF a shot, I must say that compared to the FreeSCO method of just slapping that floppy into the FDD, running through the config and being done, things are a lot more complicated today. I’d definitely not trust the average person to run through these steps to set up their own consumer-grade router.Perhaps for the LEAF version I’ll dig up a rig with FDD header on the mainboard and run it off a 1.44 MB floppy like in the good old days. Until then feel free to sound off in the comments about what obvious mistakes I have made with OpenWrt, how I should just use OPNsense on an old 19″ rackmounted Xeon server rig, or maybe your own experiences with FreeSCO, SmoothWall, OpenWrt, and/or LEAF on lovingly restored e-waste.Featured image: “Ethernet Router” by [gratuit].