Selfhosted

If you want to cut out your ISP device entirely, you will need to know exactly what setup your ISP has given to you, and then match that with your own hardware. The https://pon.wiki/ and servethehome forums are a great place to start for this.

If your ISP device has a passthrough mode that you are happy with using, practically any device with two gigabit ports will work for a 1gbps internet connection. I use a https://friendlyelec.com/ device, because they come with friendlywrt preinstalled, but your choice of router software is basically entirely preference based.

I'm also a noob with tech anymore. My old faithful router started dropping this year, replaced it with the Flint 2 earlier this year because I also wanted OpenWRT. It comes with OpenWRT installed, but I don't think it's the plain old vanilla OpenWRT, so when I hooked it up and started setting it up, it needs a firmware update anyway, so I installed the actual OpenWRT from their site. It's been great since, totally happy with it.

Unless you have fiber from your ISP you need a modem to translate from the TV or phone cable to Ethernet.

I'm not a fan of openWRT. I'd recommend you go look at NUC-style x86 mini PCs with multiple network ports instead and install OPNsense. I find the web interface much more intuitive than LuCI

If you have cable, you need a modem. You might be able to put the ISP's modem into passthrough mode. If not, get one of your own, from the ISP's supported models list.

Take a look at OPNsense which is open source or pfSense which is more commercial but still has a community version. Good documentation and will run on really old hardware as long as you have two Ethernet ports in the computer. Until last year my router was a 2007 dual core dell PC. I upgraded to a fifth generation I5.

I run the licensed version of pfSense on all the routers in my org. I have full tunnels between each location along with full blocking of malicious sites including all adult content. It may look complicated but if you want to learn how netowrking works you can do a lot worse.

My current router is an ancient laptop running NixOS. Ethernet in via the Ethernet port, and out via a USB converter. It probably could serve as a WiFi AP too, but currently I have a dumb OpenWRT in bridge mode for that.

The same laptop also selfhosts Prosody, coturn, LiveKit and stuff.

I don't really see how a proper router would be better than that.

I have seen recommended the GL·INet Flint 2 GL-MT6000 https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl-mt6000

I've used a Flint 2 GL-MT6000. Works fine for me. If you want a high-spec new OpenWRT machine, it's near the top end, from my skim. It may be overkill if you don't intend to do anything elaborate.

and is also failing a lot lately (it loses internet connection at least once a week and needs restarting).

So, you're still going to need to have a cable modem or DSL modem or whatever, if you have cable or DSL service, and it (or some other hardware, if you can get that working) going to be necessary for that bit. There are three pieces to this equation: a modem or whatever translates your satellite/long-range-wireless/cable/DSL/etc link to your ISP to Ethernet. A wireless access point, to provide WiFi. A router, to NAT connections, do things like setting up what traffic goes where, what's blocked, etc. The Flint 2 will act as a wireless access point and as a router. But it doesn't have a modem built in.

You can turn off a lot of functionality on your ISP-provided router, but you're going to keep it in the loop (with the Flint 2 plugged into it) unless you have the ability to use an alternative modem. It may be possible to replace it with a different modem, depending upon your particular situation; I believe that some ISPs may embed authentication information in the modem specifically to keep people from using alternatives.

Thus, if the ISP-provided router keeps failing in that configuration, this isn't going to fix your problem. You can reduce the functionality that the thing uses, like, maybe throw it into bridge mode (which just passes traffic through, doesn't NAT anything) and let the Flint 2 act as a router. That'll reduce what the ISP-provided router does, and if that's triggering some bug on the thing, that might resolve your problem.

If the existing router is honestly failing in some way---like, once it has problems, it never comes back without a reboot, isn't just connectivity problems---you might request a replacement.

If none of the above fixes your problem (i.e. the ISP-provided router, stays in the loop and keeps failing and only a reboot fixes things) a mitigation, albeit not a fix, would be to set something up on your network to ping the outside world and then power-cycle the router automatically if it fails for a certain amount of time.

The Asus BT8 is a wifi 7 router supported by openWRT and there is quite a few of us running it. I think generally OpenWRT is a good way to go and the Table of Hardware on the OpenWRT site will give you a dizzying array of options for wifi 6 and 7 devices that are supported and you get to pick your spec and price from those available.

You might need the modem device if you are using cable, otherwise its FTTH or DSL then you wont.

If you search for OpenWRT tutorials on youtube you will find a McFly or something like that name and he has a bunch of tutorials on how to set up OpenWRT and a range of more advanced networking topics and how to use OpenWRT to utilise them.

I found the Cisco free networking courses really helpful when trying to figure out my network stack. Some of the earlier stuff you probably know but you can skip through quickly, especially if you don't care about getting the "qualification". https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/learn/training-certifications/training/netacad/index.html

I would personally recommend keeping the router and adguard/pihole server separate. If you mess something up, it's easier to quickly switch the router DNS to a public one whilst you try to fix it, especially if you have anybody else at home who won't appreciate losing their internet because you messed up something (which will happen but let's you learn)! It's also a good idea to keep this separate from your main server for this very same point. You might accidentally use up the entire hard drive or have some messed up update on one software take all the RAM, making everything else unusable (both happened to me at different times, and one was overnight before I was working from home which was not fun to try and fix first thing in the morning!). It's not always clear which device is causing and what went wrong so can take some time to fix but gives you flexibility to fix in your own time.

That's why I would recommend getting a used thin client for £30ish (GBP) from eBay or somewhere like that. I have my pihole and home assistant on there to be clean and separate in case my server goes down. Then the internet still works, the lights still work, and things like nextcloud and jellyfin just have to wait a bit.

It also allows you to upgrade devices separately (e.g. when my internet provide unexpectedly upgraded to 2.5G I chose to buy a new router and one of the switches, and upgrade the Ethernet socket on my home server) but kept my existing WiFi access point and pihole/HASS server which still work fine after years of use. Most of my clients at home can't handle higher speeds so no point upgrading the rest of the network until they can (if ever). I have separated my WiFi access point and router because of the location of my incoming wires and home layout, which you could also think about doing. I've always thought getting seperate devices focusing on one thing they do best makes sense, and can actually be cheaper to buy.

Not sure about routers themselves but have heard good things about openwrt. I do NOT recommend the TP Link Omada series!