Besides the obvious benefits of choosing your hardware components, there is also the software side of things to consider. Picking a system like pfSense offers you the benefits of years of development ...

Will look into fwbuilder but so far was planning to go with a server distro (no GUI) and was hoping to get by using iptables directly for NAT. With regards to bufferbloat, I had run the DSL reports ...

Upgrading from your basic router, whether it was supplied by your ISP or not, is a huge step towards building a more resilient home network. You could get an off-the-shelf router or take the plunge ...