Hello all, as the title says I'm looking for some advice / equipment recommendations or options. Little bit of a read to give some background and future information to hopefully get a good conversation going and learn some things along the way.
Me Aspiring networker. I currently work for an ISP as a field tech and have been for a while. Currently in the beginning stages of course work for a CCNA. Meaning I'm learning and not tech illiterate but there is a lot I don't know and trying to catch up.
The Equpment Currently I do not have a ton for my "homelab". 1 daily driver rig that is my bread and butter (decently high end), a middle of the road media server build that serves my home and about 5 others outside my network, but never at the same time (basically a mini ATX build with older but still relevant parts), and 21 other "various" devices from smart plugs to laptops). The rig, the server and my streamer are all hardwired, everything else is wireless. All connected via an Amplifi Gamers Edition router (ISP supplied modem, perfect working order, all new coax and signal levels to it are wonderful and no SNR issues). Subscribed speed is currently 600/20 Mb/s. My home is approximately 1900 sq ft including a partially finished basement. This is where the main portion of the router is at, with the rig and server. Both mesh points are upstairs.
The Problem I've come to the conclusion that my router cannot handle the traffic, and even with all the devices, I never come close to the top end of my subscribed speeds, even when the server is downloading as I have limiters in place. Random times even when the server is off, such as a few min ago, everything seemed to grind to a halt. Even my Sonos stopped playing music while trying to DL a file via mozilla at 340 kb/s.
The Plea for Help My cry for help is asking for a solution that will cover my entire home, but allow for me to continue and build on it as my homelab grows. My next wish is to build a firewall (maybe with opensense or PFsense). I would LIKE to have 6E availability but not a requirement. I'm not opposed to building something as all I have, I built. I do wish to start self hosting more and more as my learning journey continues and I attempt to automate my home as well.
Pretty much any suggestion is welcome and if there are any questions, please ask as well.
If a simple link for guidance is all that is necessary to guide me down a path, I will take it. I do not need to be spoon fed.
Get a Qotom or any $200 4 RJ45 jack mini pc from Amazon and run Opnsense. Use a WAP for 6E if you'd like. That's it
You had my curiosity, now you have my attention.
I'd be happy to try and answer any questions you might have, if I can. Cheers
Bad thing to say, I basically always have questions lol.
Reviewing the Qotom, there are many options, for future proofing myself, how much storage space is really needed (let's factor in I plan to continue building my homelab.
For the WAP, is it possible to create a mesh system from more than one? There are only a few devices that I have "currently" that need to be hardwired but will obv. change in the future as I grow. (plus I'm sure the wife and guests will want wifi too gosh so neeedy
Storage space to run OPNsense? I think 128GB-256GB should be enough, might even be overkill (SSD/M.2 drives, don't use it on an HDD). However, this question can become more nuanced if you want your hardware to be somewhat resilient to failures, like RAID. Also, if you're going to run additional software like a reverse-proxy on your router + CA, I'd suggest more storage. I would personally use 512GB for a vanilla OPNSense install but as you can imagine that is extremely overkill and you can go years on a decent M.2 with good MBTF.
No. Not on OPNSense, AFAIK. If there is a way to create a mesh with third-party appliances, then maybe. Usually mesh WiFi comes under the topics of SDN, and I doubt OPNSense supports that (it might technically support parts of SDN since the definition is very broad, but YMMV). Usually people running Homelabs run UniFi/ASUS for Mesh Wifi (but I don't trust companies for my privacy, don't take my word for it).
Cheers