Hey folks, I have a couple things I would like some advice on. Currently for my home network setup I have my ISP’s modem/router combo set to bridge port 1, and then some google wifi and points connected to that.
My goal is to get rid of the google home wifi and if possible my ISP’s modem/router combo (I don’t really need to replace my ISP if it makes it way more complicated) with something more open and flexible.
I have a couple dell optiplex micros I can use as a pihole/dns/whatever is needed, and I was thinking of picking up a couple of these for my WAP’s and then running the omada docker container to control them.
Would this be enough or would I also need something like openwrt running on another machine as well? If that’s the case I could also pick up this and install it into one of my dell machines so I can run some kind of router software.
TLDR- what would you buy in my situation given you only want to spend about $500 cad max on all the hardware to setup a network in your home lab?
Do one thing at a time, don’t buy equipment unless you have a actionable use case for it.
Isp cpe in bridge mode
One of the boxes can be your gateway
You can keep using the Google Wi-Fi.
You can play around with proxmox, xen, etc, to run a bunch of containers, or virtual machines, to do different things on your network. I think you can do it all with your current hardware
their goal was to get rid of the google wifi.
so i’d get an openwrt box, hook that to the isp modem and call it a day.
True, but you can use your gateway to cut off google wifi from google, and still use the radios. No need to buy new hardware.
Heck, you can put openwrt on some google wifi models https://openwrt.org/toh/google/wifi
My advice stays the same, work with what you have first, save your budget, then SLOWLY, after doing research, buy one thing, and fit it in.
Your advice is good if you just want the fastest way to de-google yourself, but i think the OP wants to run a homelab, and learn, and understand.
So to start off, I have an active home lab already going with a bunch of services running. I’m looking to strictly de-google my network. Their WAP’s have issues with connectivity and reliability and they are a pain to try and configure, google really locks down what you can do on them.
Unfortunately that software won’t work on my version of google wifi, it’s just a little to new for that.
I am actively looking to replace things and not just make what I have work anymore, wether that’s one peace at a time (just the Google stuff) or the whole networking setup.
Fair enough, can’t go wrong with Ubiquiti, Mikrotik, Grandstream for radios.
Good to know! I’m trying to stay away from Ubiquiti only because of their entry cost would set me back a little over $1000, but I’ll look into Mikrotik and Grandstream as well! Thank you
Depending on your requirements, you can pick up used gear for quite cheap, set alerts on craigslist/marketplace/kijiji. i.e. one access point for like $30 used, and host your own network controller container to configure it.
If you want a single pane of glass whole network management, its going to be spendy no matter which ecosystem you go with.
Would turning one of my optiplexs into a openwrt box and buying some WAP’s be the way to go then? I will need a couple of access points to reach all devices
If you can install a second gigabit NIC into the optiplex it can work very nicely with OPNSense as the main gateway. Then you can connect the LAN side to a simple un-managed switch and branch out to anything further from there.
Edit: OpenWRT is a bit of a pain to manage on x86, so I would try to avoid it for that.
Perfect! Thankfully for $40 I can add a second gigabit connection to one of those dells, so I shall give that a go as well. Thank you!