I’m in the process of designing a home server and am curious how many ethernet ports are required at minimum and how many people recommend. The single board computer (SBC) I plan to use has two built in and has a pcie slot to add four more if necessary. If I don’t need the four extra I’d like to use the pcie slot for a pcie Coral Edge TPU (preferred over the USB variant but still an option).

I expect to plan to use the server to connect to my home network so any device on the network via WiFi can access NextCloud. Besides that I want to use Frigate in another container for home video surveillance. I don’t know if I can or want to yet also add a Plex or Jellyfin instance to then connect to my TV or use a separate SBC for that.

What are your thoughts? I’m new to all of these things and just don’t want to waste money on the wrong hardware. Thanks!

  • FiveMacs
    link
    fedilink
    English
    2
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Backup internet, eg two ISPs supplying internet to your house.

    Two (or more) seperate networks that need access to the same server. This is done so is network A is down, network B can still access the server.

    I still don’t fully understand your question. You NEED at least one rj45 to supply network access to the server. (I’m ignoring the fact that wifi exists)

    • @[email protected]OP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      11 year ago

      I didn’t know you could have to ISPs connected to one device. I won’t be requiring that however. I was wondering if besides the one port to connect my server to the router there was anything else I was missing or is commonly used that I should be aware of to take up another port.

      • FiveMacs
        link
        fedilink
        English
        21 year ago

        Well they would be going to the router and the router would be handling it, but you could still have seperate feeds from the router on lan/opt ports to the device.dont think they will both function at the same time though, system needs priorities

        • grahamsz
          link
          fedilink
          21 year ago

          I’ve seen it done in data center environments where there are two connections to two different switches - so you can do maintenance on either switch without downtime.

          Same reason for having dual power feeds to each machine.