Anything gained privacy-wise by using OpenWRT if already on VPN?

Been going down the rabbit hole of reading up on OPNSense and OpenWRT hardware upgrades, and it got me thinking about how much I’d even gain by spending all this money on routers and AP’s. Background info: using apartment complex’s free high speed, but all devices use VPN (PC, mobiles, AppleTV). Nothing really talks to each other over network except for occasional AirPlay (I think my usn/pw puts me on my own VLAN).

So will I really gain any tangible benefit privacy-wise by segmenting myself? I already treat the network as hostile, so I’m on VPN 24/7. I’m accepting the occasional DNS leaks from my Apple devices (I wouldn’t hard-profile a VPN in my own router anyways, cause I like hopping around). I guess maybe there’s individualized telemetry for how often I use my five devices, but eh, I dunno.

Anything else that would make me want to actually spend some money on my own routers/AP if performance is already good enough for me?

From my perspective, if I can’t control a network, anything I do is a risk, even with a VPN.

You’ll also have a peace of mind because you’d have significantly more control using your own hardware.

2 Likes

True, I’d have more control, but I’d still be sending all my VPN traffic through them regardless, right? It’s like using a Starbucks WiFi, I wouldn’t expect my updated devices to be vulnerable.

Are you thinking of something specific that I could do more reading up on?

1 Like

I think that the privacy gain in your case would be minimal for most people. In some cases, you might want to avoid them knowing when you are home, then having your own AP might be beneficial.

There could be some security advantage because you would be in control of security updates and the firewall.

However, opensene and openwrt would be really benefits for iot devices, if you want to seperate them and control to which devices they can talk to.