There are three major players OPNSense, PFSense
, OpenWRT. These can be mixed and matched, eg. You can have OPNSense as the gateway and OpenWRT in the APs.
Between OPNSense and PFSense, better go with OPNSense
There are three major parts
Router(Gateway)
Firewall
Access Points(AP).
All of this can be done by one device or separate device based on preference. Eg. You can run commercial routers in AP mode and have some old laptop be the router, or simply use a commercial router which will do all 3 etc.
Things you can do(most of them overkill for a homelab)
policy routing
firewalling
DNS filtering
I(D/P)S
Dual WAN
Monitoring
AntiBufferBloat
Traffic shaping
RADIUS etc.
OpenWRT
Started as a firmware replacement for a Linksys WRT54G, ended up being a powerful Linux-based router OS
Designed to run on small embedded devices, like commercial routers and single board computers. can also run x86
Designed to be a powerful wireless access point/router.
Firewall is good but the *Sense are better at this.