Build a router

[hizzo3]

On the hardware side look at Raspberry Pi and if you want to look deeper than that look around for embedded systems.  Also it would help tons if you are already an expert at programming; otherwise it will be a challenging project.

Banana PI has a router board. RPI shares the Ethernet connection with the USB hub. Banana PI is using an A20 AW arm chip with dedicated connection, plus on-board lan (think it was realtek)

BTW, just updated my network to a dedicated security appliance using pfsense. So much better than using it in a VM. [emoji1]