My Current Tech Setup
• I have a high-end rig at home that I use for graphic design, gaming, web design, projects, etc. Everything essentially.
• I have a laptop that I travel with and basically use as a small workstation for non-intensive design work and some light gaming when away from the home rig.
• I also have a portable drive made from an M.2 SSD and enclosure to use on my work PC at the office and pretty much anywhere I need to use certain things on a guest PC when away from home and don’t have or want to use my laptop.
The Goal
I want to be able to more or less combine it all through a home network so I can sync, backup, and save everything and have access to more of my files no matter what I’m using or where I am while increasing privacy & security.
The Plan (so far)
Modem & Router
I’m thinking of going the route of buying my own modem (to replace the ISP provided one) as well as building my own router (again to replace the ISP one). From my understanding replacing these two things will reduce the monthly cost, while also giving me more control over the network as a whole or at least it’s access and security.
The router, I’m trying to figure out if I want to go with a raspberry pi type of setup using pi-hole and VMing pf/opnsense or do some other type of single board computer and just run pf/opnsense on that and do something else for the dns. Either way I’ll probably connect it to a wireless access and a switch as that’s what I understand to be the best for performance I think?
NAS
I’m also wanting to run a NAS, unsure if I want to build or buy, leaning towards build. The goal with that is to have that be the central point for storage, sync, and backup between my different devices. I also want to set it up in a way that I can also use part of it for running some game server projects like modded minecraft for me and my friends to mess around on.
Smart Home
Little home projects like magicmirror and such sound super fun and interesting to me as well and I’ll be doing different things like that to connect and play around with.
Thoughts
I’ve been trying my best to do as much research as possible, but it’s getting extremely overwhelming. I’m not exactly sure where to start and there are a ton of options for everything. I was considering maybe starting with the NAS as that was the first project I really wanted to do before I got into the rabbit hole and wanting to add everything else to it. I also suffered a lot of data loss not long ago that really scared me into wanting to fix that sooner rather than later. (Ended up being able to recreate everything I lost, so it wasn’t too too major.)
If anyone has any advice to offer, it’s more than appreciated.
I’m trying to figure out how to organize everything, what to do in what order, organize the information on it, etc. It’s a lot. I’m pretty good with computers and love building my own, but this is very new territory for me. Just looking for fun stuff to do and learn while making my life easier at the same time haha.
Am I possibly thinking too big here? Am I biting off more than I can chew? Please let me know if this all sounds ridiculous.
Boom. Not ridiculous, just excited and giddy. Building a homelab is a hobby.
The router/modem thing will be up to you. if you don’t have one for your specific use-case, then I wouldn’t suggest you worry about it.
Some reasons people buy their own router:
not being subject to their automated maintenance schedule (eg ISP rebooting your modem arbitrarily - like comcast does weekly to reduce call volume- often at times that can be inconvient for some customers.)
not having to pay equipment rental fees
(which can - over time - add up to more than the cost of purchasing a modem outright)
some modems won’t be able to make use of the max speeds your service provider offers.
not being subject to arbitrarily enforced policies on the hardware (Eg some ISPs disable event logging, which can be a useful troubleshooting aid when not disabled.)
not having to endure shit firmware (eg zyxel’s aDSL modems)
also sometimes done to avoid/get around issues like routing table entry limits. (people with too many port forwarding/triggering rules)
As far as should you, ask yourself, do you need to for a specific reason? will it save you money in the long run? If the answer to both of those is no… then there’s no real reason to do so.
If you want to run random stuff on a box like minecraft for the boys or some linux distro you’ve never heard of before, proxmox the laptop and go crazy. keep your current OS on an external drive for when you want it to be a PC again. If you wanna build a NAS and horde weeb shows, go for it. There is no right or wrong hardware. Same goes for sequence of events.
Think of it like a garden. You’ve got some dirt, put whatever you want in there and see what you can make out of it. You’ll learn, have new ideas, and deep dive into the next thing that interests you. Don’t let reddit convince you to fill 4 racks and install an new AC unit just yet.
Thanks, I appreciate it!