Now that I have time for hobbies again I wanna dive right in to building up a home lab. Right now I just have a Netgear router that reached end of life, and a NAS i’d like to make accessible remotely, and a DIY router seems like the correct next step for me. I’m very interested in ad-blocking network wide and someday I’d like to host my own little webpage, but for now I’m really just barely getting started.
I’m information gathering, I don’t know what I don’t know and my networking skills are pretty weak anyway. But even if your needs and desires have nothing to do with mine, I also just like to hear people talk about their set ups. Please? 🌞
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You can get fanless mini PCs bare from aliexpress for cheap then buy laptop ram and ssd seperetly (chepeast you can find)
Thank you!
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters AP WiFi Access Point DHCP Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, automates assignment of IPs when connecting to a network DNS Domain Name Service/System ISP Internet Service Provider IoT Internet of Things for device controllers LXC Linux Containers NAS Network-Attached Storage NAT Network Address Translation NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage NVR Network Video Recorder (generally for CCTV) PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express PiHole Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole) PoE Power over Ethernet SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage Unifi Ubiquiti WiFi hardware brand VPN Virtual Private Network
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Currently running OPNsense on a small Dual-Nic Shuttle PC with an Pentium G4560 and 4 gigs of ram and it’s been handling everything I throw at it perfectly fine. Ive got 16 Interfaces, around 10 Wireguard Peers and a SIT tunnel to HE and Im still getting Line Speeds through the firewall.
I might be able to snag that same model with an i5-6500 for around 60€. Could you tell me more about your experience with it? In particular, how are the thermals and the power consumption, can it handle 1Gb/s on both ethernet ports, and have you encountered any compatibility issues with OPNsense?
Thermals are pretty much ok as long as you dont have the cpu at 100% 24/7. I’ve never had it go over ~50°C in normal use in my basement. Not sure if it can handle gbit on 2 ports but Iperf between two vlans on the same NIC works flawlessly with lots of cpu to spare
Mine sits at around ~11W during normal usage (~40mbps into a wireguard tunnel)
OPNsense on used dell optiplex. Very easy but it can do whatever you want to grow into as you learn more.
Is the power consumption too bad, if you know?
