First, a hardware question. I’m looking for a computer to use as a… router? Louis calls it a router but it’s a computer that is upstream of my whole network and has two ethernet ports. And suggestions on this? Ideal amount or RAM? Ideal processor/speed? I have fiber internet, 10 gbps up and 10 gbps down, so I’m willing to spend a little more on higher bandwidth components. I’m assuming I won’t need a GPU.

Anyways, has anyone had a chance to look at his guide? It’s accompanied by two youtube videos that are about 7 hours each.

I don’t expect to do everything in his guide. I’d like to be able to VPN into my home network and SSH into some of my projects, use Immich, check out Plex or similar, and set up a NAS. Maybe other stuff after that but those are my main interests.

Any advice/links for a beginner are more than welcome.

Edit: thanks for all the info, lots of good stuff here. OpenWRT seems to be the most frequently recommended thing here so I’m looking into that now. Unfortunately my current router/AP (Asus AX6600) is not supported. I was hoping to not have to replace it, it was kinda pricey, I got it when I upgraded to fiber since it can do 6.6gbps. I’m currently looking into devices I can put upstream of my current hardware but I might have to bite the bullet and replace it.

Edit 2: This is looking pretty good right now.

  • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Just kinda flipped through his guide. It’s a bit dated on knowledge and techniques, even for beginners.

    You don’t need a computer for a router. Get a router that ships with OpenWRT and start there. GL.iNet makes good and affordable stuff. Use that for your ad blocking, VPN, and so on to get started.

    I’d just skip OpenVPN altogether and get started with Wireguard or Headscale/Tailscale.

    If you want to run other heavier services, start out with a low-power minipc until you’re settled on what your needs or limitations are. You can get a very capable AMD minipc for $250-300, or an n100 low-power for a bit cheaper. Check out Minisforum units for this. Reliable, good price, and solid warranty.

    If you deal in heavy storage, maybe consider adding a NAS to the mix, but maybe that’s a further steps. OpenWRT is a good starting point just to get your basic network services and remote access up, then just move on from there.

    A good and fun starting point for some people is setting up Home Assistant on a minipc or Raspberry Pi (honestly, the costs of Pi boards now is insane. Might be good just to get the minipc).

    • dudeami0@lemmy.dudeami.winEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      I’d just skip OpenVPN altogether and get started with Wireguard or Headscale/Tailscale.

      This one was huge for me. OpenVPN is pretty heavy with CPU overhead, where as wireguard is almost free. I was getting throttled due to the overhead of OpenVPN and roasting the CPU on my Netgear R6350 (it’s what I had lying around). With wireguard I get nearly the same speeds as without a VPN and my loads are very reasonable.

      Also with weaker routers like mine, be wary of trying to use QoS, this will probably not help network congestion and instead become a bottleneck (like it did for me). This is where a beefy dedicated router really shines.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I wouldn’t trust his guides personally. He has some hot takes and more importantly he isn’t someone who really knows the Homelab/self hosting landscape.

    If you are looking for guides I would find channels that have done series on whatever you are interested in there is plenty of quality material.

    To start off here is what I would do.

    First, get a wireless router that is capable of running OpenWRT and then get a switch to accompany it.

    Next go to eBay and buy 3 used workstations. They don’t need to be fancy and you can always upgrade them later. You need 3 for later.

    Next find some storage. You can find decent Sata SSDs for pretty cheap. If you are looking to store something bigger like a movie collection also pickup some larger drives. With the extra drives make sure you buy a sata or SAS pcie card. This is because you need a dedicated controller to passthough to a VM.

    Once you have all that you can start installing Proxmox. You probably want a raid 1 configuration so that you can replace a disk without downtime. The reason I say three devices is because you need 3 machines to get consensus in the cluster. When consensus is lost affected devices go into what is called fencing which is where it freezes all VMs and operations to prevent split brain from happening.

    Technically this is probably a bit overkill but I like having a solid base for experimentation and flexibility. Doing it right from the get go will mean that you have more power down the road.

    For actually hosting stuff I would use docker compose inside a VM.