Routers & Other Networking Stuff

I went with this one. It arrives Friday, so we'll see how it goes. Thanks for the suggestions.

Jovec said:

Things like this are out there. Most of the recent stuff will be AMD based though given the much better IGP performance. I'm running OPNsense (and more) on this mATX board - using 1 of the 2 10Gbs for the LAN side, with the 1Gbs for the WAN.

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I've got an older version of that- This guy Are you doing a proxmox dealy and running the router in a vm with a passthrough nic? I half ass started to run pfsense in a vm on my server which is running truenas core, but my brain started hurting about cabling, and passing through the nic was a bit squirrely when i tried last. I do want to get a 10g connection between my nas and main pc at somepoint, but that's a few nic purchases out.
Definitely have been eyeballing random sff machines for a pf or opnsense router box tho.

bolok said:

I've got an older version of that- This guy Are you doing a proxmox dealy and running the router in a vm with a passthrough nic? I half ass started to run pfsense in a vm on my server which is running truenas core, but my brain started hurting about cabling, and passing through the nic was a bit squirrely when i tried last. I do want to get a 10g connection between my nas and main pc at somepoint, but that's a few nic purchases out.
Definitely have been eyeballing random sff machines for a pf or opnsense router box tho.

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Yes, proxmox and running Opnsense as a VM. You just need two network interfaces. 1 goes to the cable modem or which ever WAN device you use, the other goes into your network switch. They both will be setup as bridge devices, but the WAN-side is just used by OPNsense, while every other VM will share the LAN side bridge device. You don't need to pass the NIC through for a home network. I do pass through my HBA card to my TrueNAS Vm though.

Opnsense is what I'm thinking for my setup, but I was going to install it directly. I don't know shit about Proxmox so it hadn't even occurred to me.

Jovec said:

Yes, proxmox and running Opnsense as a VM. You just need two network interfaces. 1 goes to the cable modem or which ever WAN device you use, the other goes into your network switch. They both will be setup as bridge devices, but the WAN-side is just used by OPNsense, while every other VM will share the LAN side bridge device. You don't need to pass the NIC through for a home network. I do pass through my HBA card to my TrueNAS Vm though.

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Pretty sure you’d want to pass a 10g nic. Could be wrong. I don’t have a 10g switch, so was going to try some shenanigans with a point to point connection to my pc once I picked up some nics and fiber. But that way lies madness. I’m not doing proxmox tho. I’m running truenas on bare metal and forking around with the router in a vm there. I’ll fuck around with it more at some point if I don’t snag a mini pc to use as a router. Just means downtime for my servers

Well, the device showed up and one of the ports is fubar. Sending it back and getting a refund. Time for a new plan. Here's what I'm going for:

My current setup is as follows:
AT&T U-Verse Internet ( I have to use their Modem. It's set to: 192.168.1.1 and works in IP Passthrough mode )

Netgear router ports ( Set to 192.168.2.1 )
U-Verse Modem
Switch ( Every room has multiple RJ-45 jacks going directly to this in my 'server room' )
Drobo 5N ( Current NAS for media storage / backups. Static IP: 192.168.2.30 )
Deco mesh system for all Wireless connections ( Setup as 192.168.3.1 )

I've just been using my dated Netgear router and the Drobo without any extras, so this will be a huge upgrade for me. I currently use a Kodi box on each TV to watch stuff while I'm home, but I need something like Plex to access my media while on the road... and the Drobo can't run Plex ( I tried ). I'd like to upgrade my setup with something that can run Router/Firewall/Plex ( maybe something to filter Ads and such ). I was thinking maybe Proxmox with OPNSense and Plex installed? Should I setup separate devices for each individual function, or if I go with an all-in-one device, what would I need for number of CPU Cores, memory, etc.?

Kais said:

So in the new place there's two rooms i won't be able to get ethernet drops in but they do have cable outlets. Not going to get CATV. Anyone have any experience with coax to ethernet MoCA?

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No idea how that compares to coax, but I tried one of the ethernet over powerline adapters a while back. It worked, but it was a bit finicky and the speeds weren't great, not sure if that was an actual limitation or if it could be better with a better adapter. For occasional/light use it would probably be ok, but I wouldn't want it as my main connection unless there are much better adapters.

Kais said:

So in the new place there's two rooms i won't be able to get ethernet drops in but they do have cable outlets. Not going to get CATV. Anyone have any experience with coax to ethernet MoCA?

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I used MoCA in an older rental house like 5-6 years ago and got pretty good speeds with it I think?

I don’t know your use case but mine was

Gigabit fiber - MoCA - Access Point in a separate room of the house and I could get about 500-600mbps at the acess point which was obviously slower than gigabit but better than any other internet I’d ever had before. Having used Ethernet over power lines (shitty) before in college I thought MoCA was a far far superior experience

edit: I just noticed Control ‘s post above and agree 100% with his assessment of Ethernet over power. MoCA felt completely different