The ultimate home node guide

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Hey guys!

Over the last weeks (if not months) I’ve been trying to contribute to the network’s decentralization by spinning up some servers from home. As most of you probably realized by now, this comes with a few hurdles. Most ISP (Internet Service Providers) routers do not support several thousand NAT table entries that are required for running nodes. Additionally, most dedicated hardware locks you into licensed software and limits what you can customize. For some (and I don’t blame them) this feels really overwhelming and a hurdle they do not want to take.

To make it easier for people to start nodes from home and tweak their setup, I’ve started to create the ultimate home node guide. From choosing the hardware for your router, to installing and configuring OPNsense (open source router software) and installing Linux and spinning up nodes.

Please keep in mind that this is a V1 edition, but I think most hurdles and considerations that are required are covered in detail. Please let me know if anything is sub-optimal or unclear so we can expand on this document to make it even easier for the next person.

You can access the guide here: Autonomi ultimate home node guide (OPNsense - Linux) - Google Sheets

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If I ever get good Internet I’ll follow you on the path with home nodes and opensense :tada: :sunglasses:

Thank you for sharing your experience (even if I might never benefit from it personally xD)

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I’m wondering what would be involved with pairing this setup with an access point…

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Pretty much nothing changes. How I have it is ISP → MS-01 (OPNsense) → Switch (managed). From the switch I go to my server, some other devices and 2 acces points (if router/sattelite in one it should always be in bridge mode).

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Basically if you put the AP into “bridged” mode then everything just passes through it upstream.

Devices get their IP address off the main router etc. It basically become invisible to the network

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@Shu I believe you mentioned before that the team suspects home nodes to earn less than cloud servers (like hetzner).

Is this just regarding the —home-node command during startup or all nodes being run on a home network?

I’m currently closely monitoring nanos earned by my home server vs my hetzner servers, and pretty much every day I check my Hetzner server is outperforming my home server by 30/40% on average. Home node CPU usage seems to be lower by around that same percentage.

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I don’t recall stating that statement, and if I did that might have been with a specific version in the past? :thinking: .

The thinking behind it if I did say it was that port forwarding is the cleanest route to have less transport errors, and if you are unable to do that, then use --home-network, but you are at the mercy of other nodes handling the circuit relays for your node.

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