My Homelab currently consists of 3 Mini PC’s and will eventually be put in a 10" rack
They are all just plugged into the router my ISP provided, I’d like to get a new router that runs open-source software and create a new network from it. I have no idea where to begin.
What hardware would you recommend?
Bonus: If possible I’d like to in the future attach a sim card to my network as a backup for the occasion that the ISP connection drops. (just a nice to have)
I’ve had the opposite experience with Mikrotik.
I really wanted to like it, but (I say this as a former Cisco instructor) their approach to UI and documentation is terrible (the docs don’t tell you what’s what, just tell you how to setup a specific config, without explaining what they’re doing or why, even worse, they start numbering their eth interfaces from 1 - it took me a while to figure this out).
Worse, it was unstable as hell. I setup one just as a test, with one laptop connected via ethernet. Every couple days I wouldn’t be able to even ping the laptop - I’d have to reboot the router, manually, since it had become unresponsive.
This with a simple config (just eth2 is LAN, eth1 is external), and no rules.
It may have been a faulty unit, but as a consumer I can’t risk assuming this, especially given the very poor docs and clumsy UI/config approach - it all indicates this is a very immature product, definitely not something I’d recommend to a newbie.
I hope they can really improve - the form factor is excellent, the price point is unbeatable, the capabilites of the hardware are extensive.