So I recently(ish) went through this - migrating from consumer hardware to rolling my own.
Here’s what I did:
I bought a mini-PC router and loaded OPNsense onto it.
I needed wireless AP’s in some odd places, so I bought a pair of POE-powered Netgear WAX620 AP’s because they were a decent price, and a 2.5G POE+ Switch.
I probably would not go with Netgear again. They try to lock you into their cloud (subscription) platform. I don’t dig it. I would probably also not go with a POE switch unless I had to, because it adds a lot to the cost.
If I had planned better, I’d have waited until a decent older switch became available from a local surplus source. (The local university has a public surplus site that sometimes has interesting and cheap networking gear.)
If you plan to set up VLANs, make sure your switches are up to the task.



I bet he leaves those behind because Dennis Feinstein panned “Fresh Kash,” the cologne he created.
(Before anyone thinks I’m confusing Aziz Ansari’s Tom Haverford character from Parks and Rec with Kash Patel, please be assured that I think Kash Patel is confusing Tom Haverford with himself.)