## Building my own router

So after poor luck with mPCIe in my miniPC I decided to go with USB wifi solutions. So I got the https://aliexpress.com/item/... , hooked it up and started setting things up. Took me a day to figure out that firewalld (CentOS7/8 firewall) is not directly compatible with raw iptables commands. Damn it! But hey, a lesson learnt is time well spent!

Installed named, dhcpd, hostapd, disabled NetworkManager for my wifi card, etc.. And had to learn another lesson -- if a netowrk interface is bridged then iptables sees the bridge rather than the raw interface. That's another 2 hours well spent :)

In the end I have a working AP!!! It's still hooked in to my router via RJ45, but it does work and does work quite well!

Here's some comparison for now:
via router (2.4): https://speedtest.net/result/...
via router (5): https://speedtest.net/result/...

via miniPC (2.4): https://speedtest.net/result/...
via miniPC (5): <TBD>

Not that bad, aye?

All in all I'm happy with my decision to build a miniPC based router. Now I have the modularity I wanted so mush and a complete control on my networking! Can't wait for wifi6 USB dongles to be released :)