Wiring home, need tips for home lab / networking

_Root_

_Root_

Disciple
I have wired cat6 cable from a central point where my router will be placed to points - desktop and PS4.

My router has 4 ports - Desktop, PS4, Raspberry pi (pihole) and 4th I am planning to get NAS (still confused) Do I still need a switch? cause these 4 ports suffice my requirement.

I would like to add firewall, NAS is there anything I should do / buy to make my network better?

My router (Mi Xiomi 3G) is running OpenWRT.

I am a complete noob so looking for suggestions and tips.
 
I don't think you need a switch at the moment. Depending on how big your home is, and how strong the wi-fi signal is, and what your usage pattern is, you may need to get wi-fi range extenders.
If you can still pull some cat6 cable, then I'd suggest pulling it to your tv, and any other room that's left out.
Also, I think you can do everything that pihole can do in open-wrt. You could put your Pi to better use as a NAS + Kodi Box.
 
My home is not big so one router should be good enough to cover. Also I did think of adding cat6 in every room but I don't have any other device that has or require lan port except for TV, ps4 and laptop.

I read review that Pi is not good for NAS, do you have any recommendation? I am not a heavy user so attaching 2/4TB of HDD is good for me
 
I used to use a Raspberry Pi 3 as a file server + media center. For 1 or 2 users, it was fast enough.
I was using Seafile for file sync, Baikal for contact+calendar sync. I was also using it to download torrents, and Kodi for my media center. I stopped using it for file/contact sync only because it didn't make sense it keep it turned on the entire day. I used to get really slow WiFi speeds in my old house, so I never bothered streaming movies from it, but I think it'll be fast enough if there's only 1 or 2 users streaming movies.
If you have a Raspberry Pi 4, it'll work a lot better than my Pi 3 did.
I think your router has a USB3 port, you could first try using that, if the routers inbuilt USB is slow, or you don't like open-wrt's NAS, then try using the Pi.
 
_Root_ said:
My home is not big so one router should be good enough to cover. Also I did think of adding cat6 in every room but I don't have any other device that has or require lan port except for TV, ps4 and laptop.

I read review that Pi is not good for NAS, do you have any recommendation? I am not a heavy user so attaching 2/4TB of HDD is good for me
Click to expand...
buy asus router with gigabit ports it has overall good features and might suffice your need , or otherwise you have an option of custom Pfsense builds with used intel quad nic cards
 
You don't need a switch, till you run out of ports on your router, or need it as a failsafe in case you plan on adding more devices in the future.

Your experience using Raspberry Pi as a NAS will depend your variant of Pi, and your exact use case. You can easily run an older Pi variant as a simple file sharing/serving setup, or even serve low-res media (using lightweight media servers such as MiniDLNA, MPD, etc.). For anything fancier, you may need a more recent Pi - or a low-powered desktop system. And for a true full-fledged NAS setup, you'll need far better hardware.

And, if you are *really* new to setting up a network (and if you haven't done so already), you could focus on setting up gigabit connections between the wired devices, verifying throughputs between them, using proper cables, etc.
 
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