My Homelab currently consists of 3 Mini PC’s and will eventually be put in a 10" rack

They are all just plugged into the router my ISP provided, I’d like to get a new router that runs open-source software and create a new network from it. I have no idea where to begin.

What hardware would you recommend?

Bonus: If possible I’d like to in the future attach a sim card to my network as a backup for the occasion that the ISP connection drops. (just a nice to have)

  • Know_not_Scotty_does@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    12 hours ago

    They are not open source but I just started dipping my toes into the Mikrotik ecosystem and the hardware has been pretty nice from what I have seen. I am not a network guy, just a homegamer coming from normal asus routers though. They have a couple of options for adding cell service via sim cards but I have not looked too far into it.

    Edit: it looks like there is an openwrt release for the rb5009ug I am using. I may need to check that out.

    • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      3·
      11 hours ago

      I’ve had the opposite experience with Mikrotik.

      I really wanted to like it, but (I say this as a former Cisco instructor) their approach to UI and documentation is terrible (the docs don’t tell you what’s what, just tell you how to setup a specific config, without explaining what they’re doing or why, even worse, they start numbering their eth interfaces from 1 - it took me a while to figure this out).

      Worse, it was unstable as hell. I setup one just as a test, with one laptop connected via ethernet. Every couple days I wouldn’t be able to even ping the laptop - I’d have to reboot the router, manually, since it had become unresponsive.

      This with a simple config (just eth2 is LAN, eth1 is external), and no rules.

      It may have been a faulty unit, but as a consumer I can’t risk assuming this, especially given the very poor docs and clumsy UI/config approach - it all indicates this is a very immature product, definitely not something I’d recommend to a newbie.

      I hope they can really improve - the form factor is excellent, the price point is unbeatable, the capabilites of the hardware are extensive.

      • Know_not_Scotty_does@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        10 hours ago

        Yeah the docs are not good, I have been lucky to have a friend with lots of experience in their ecosystem who has been schooling me up on it. Once I got the basic configuration setup its been fine.

        I may regret saying that in a bit when I go to add my other components, like my adguard/pi-hole, vpns, ip cameras, and other networked devices but the basic test setup I have now seems to be stable enough to deploy.

        I have not seen the connection loss issues but I will keep an eye out for it.

    • non_burglar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      12 hours ago

      OpenWRT on a 5009? Why? You’ll lose the switch/cpu integration and a whole lot of speed, not to mention features…