> As a homelabber myself (enterprise networking + servers) there are quite a few things to consider before jumping ahead with such a setup
Well. I have over quarter of century of experience in IT, as a sysadmin, developer, electronics engineer and tech lead. It helps. I would never suggest anybody to do this just to have a nice WiFi at home...
> Finally unless your family knows how to maintain the system as well, you'll be the sole IT contact and will have to do quite a bit of support especially at the start. You'll need a plan of how to remotely manage everything if you're say on vacation since things like to crop up then.
Yep. I have VPN I can use to manage the network. All devices can be rebooted remotely.
I also have some backups -- the 5G router can be disconnected from the setup and used standalone and I have instructed my wife how to do this. Most of the files are synchronised to a cloud service where she can connect in need.
The passwords to everything are stored in tamper evident envelopes (and a paper books with a log in my own handwriting).
As to power consumption this probably is the weakest point of all of this. Yes, a lot of devices equals a lot of power, but my devices are extra power hungry. Although I tried to avoid unnecessary electricity waste (if only to keep it fanless) I never compromised quality for it. For example, I went out of my way to not buy an actual server even though there is a plenty of used servers that I would be perfectly happy with. Instead I built my own based on one of a kind motherboard that supports a consumer CPU and ECC RAM and uses relatively little power.
Hah from reading your original post I already knew you were good. My comment was really meant for those interested in these setups (I get asked about this quite often) without realizing the time and effort needed to maintain it. This can be a real rabbit hole as I started with an Edgerouter and Unifi AP and eventually worked my way up.
I really like your idea of having a separate router that can be used standalone if the main system fails, and might actually consider adopting that for my family as it would be very useful if I'm not available. Currently I'm looking into a virtual HA Opnsense setup on two servers to maintain routing if one fails and cannot restart for whatever reason.
We take this router with us on trips. It is nice to have your own fast, mobile Internet with you (no transfer or bandwidth limits). And when it does not serve as backup Internet it has site-to-site VPN to our home network.
Well. I have over quarter of century of experience in IT, as a sysadmin, developer, electronics engineer and tech lead. It helps. I would never suggest anybody to do this just to have a nice WiFi at home...
> Finally unless your family knows how to maintain the system as well, you'll be the sole IT contact and will have to do quite a bit of support especially at the start. You'll need a plan of how to remotely manage everything if you're say on vacation since things like to crop up then.
Yep. I have VPN I can use to manage the network. All devices can be rebooted remotely.
I also have some backups -- the 5G router can be disconnected from the setup and used standalone and I have instructed my wife how to do this. Most of the files are synchronised to a cloud service where she can connect in need.
The passwords to everything are stored in tamper evident envelopes (and a paper books with a log in my own handwriting).
As to power consumption this probably is the weakest point of all of this. Yes, a lot of devices equals a lot of power, but my devices are extra power hungry. Although I tried to avoid unnecessary electricity waste (if only to keep it fanless) I never compromised quality for it. For example, I went out of my way to not buy an actual server even though there is a plenty of used servers that I would be perfectly happy with. Instead I built my own based on one of a kind motherboard that supports a consumer CPU and ECC RAM and uses relatively little power.