I’ve gotten into selfhosting and have 3 mini PC’s

ODROID H4+ for TrueNAS
One for Home Assistant
and another for Immich and Nextcloud

They’re all just plugged into the router my ISP provided with network cables.

I’d like to get a managed switch or a router of my own that can function as a switch and router

I’ll be putting everything in a 10" rack at some point so it has to fit.

Any suggestions or tips would be appreciated, I’ve done some research and looked at options but unsure what is right/wrong

I’m especially stuck on what Hardware to get. Is 2.5ghz managed switch overkill? Should I get PoE for future use?
What brands are good, what should be avoided?

  • exu@feditown.comEnglish
    5·
    3 days ago

    You need something other than your ISP provided router, otherwise you’ll be constantly limited by a few basic settings they allow you to change. Check with your ISP if you can use your own router directly, if their routers have a bridge mode or if you can buy an alternative modem that does bridging.

    If you want a simple and cohesive ecosystem, Unifi is the one to beat. They offer routers and switches and you can manage them all from a single dashboard.

    For an open source router, the best option is OPNsense. Get one of the multi port x86 boxes from Aliexpress (e.g. Qotom) and install it on that.

    Personally, I don’t like OpenWRT, but that would be an option to flash a cheap consumer router.

    TP-Link offers some great switches, look at their JetStream series. They’re usually a bit cheaper than equivalent Unifi switches as well.

    As an anti-recommendation I’ll mention Mikrotik. Their hardware is great and they provide great value, but the UI is extremely confusing for newcomers. It’s all well documented (in the form of terminal commands, but the UI is basically built like that), but you need to know networking before you can find what and how you need to change settings.

    • Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      Spent the whole day looking at routers and switches, and I think I’m going with Unifi their prices are on par with the open source alternatives and they seem to just work no fuss, and I can run them fully locally and not depend on the cloud if I wanted.

      I don’t want to buy any hardware that can be taken away from me with a firmware push where I now need to pay a subscription to use my product. Wile that risk with Unifi doesn’t seem to be zero, it seems close to zero.

    • Seefoo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      UI is confusing, but its a good platform to learn. there are a lot of resources for doing typical stuff (dhcp,dns, wireguard, firewall rules, etc.)