Networking Board
As an amateur homelabber, I’ve always thought about of ‘maxing out’. Having my own personal 20U 19-inch rack, full of blade servers doing my bidding in a closet. With a bespoke-built cooling solution that was power efficient and whisper quiet. The clients on my LAN would enjoy transparent ad-blocking, and would stream locally stored HD media with blisteringly fast inter-connectivity from a multi terabyte NAS with SFP interfaces and switches. And to feed the network, I would have a fiber optic connection from my ISP, with no less than a gigabit connection. That, is the end game.
But having lived life a bit, I’ve realized that simpler is better (and cheaper). But I do like having control over my domain (no pun intended) and saving a bit a money. So instead of renting my SOHO router from my ISP, I’d set up my own.
I started by looking for compatible devices, and set a budget based on average pricing. Then when my budget was ready, I started working on the networking board. I was originally inspired by the video done by Linus Tech Tips. It overall resonated with me since 1) have a corner of networking stuff that’s piled up a needed to be organized and 2) I’m a renter so I can’t drill holes.
My next goal is to flash my Linksys WRT with openWRT, but I’ve only had it for a few months, so I’d like to enjoy everything working for a bit before I risk bricking it. I didn’t bother with cable management either since I know I’ll change everything in a few months, and make it easier to change later.
Device diagram
