As I’m in the beginning steps of sorting out my homelab, I’m starting to ask questions I haven’t asked before and come across conundrums I hadn’t considered previously. One of which is how to sort out pi-hole given that my ISP has locked down the router tighter than a tight thing.
As I had been reading about and watching YouTube videos, I had stumbled across Tailscale and the idea of VLANs is a nice one. That coupled with wanting to block ads and a new router seemed to the optimal choice.
Another thing is that I eventually want to get a Reolink POE video doorbell and Reolink E1 outdoor camera for my garden and so I’m trying to think somewhat ahead as the last thing I want is a server rack in my house. Aesthetically speaking.
So I stumbled across all the recommendations for Mikrotik and they’re really reasonably priced, especially compared to the Netgear Nighthawk thing I was looking at for ten times the price.
The Mikrotik HAP AX Lite is reasonably priced, does all the cool new stuff, let’s me set up virtual local area networks, has room for growth and has PoE capabilities. It seems to be the perfect choice. But is it? Because it seems almost too good to be true.
Consider a micro pc running opnsense (or Pfsense) instead.
Just look on amazon for “micro firewall pc” and you’ll see what I mean. Then you can look into separate APs.
It’ll cost more, but it’s a better step for your home lab.
When you say separate access points, what do you mean? I’m probably not understanding you correctly, because I’m interpreting it as you’re saying that I should buy separate devices for WiFi?
To me that pretty much defeats the point completely. Most of my house runs on WiFi and I also don’t want a server rack or loads of different pieces of equipment strewn around the place, hence why the Mikrotik is so appealing, as it can route, firewall and do POE all at an incredibly reasonable price. That said, reading some comments online, it’s got a steep learning curve and it’s really hands-on.