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!
The cameras are on the same network, or worse, on the same WiFi?
If everything is on the same WiFi, then you need a single gigabit Ethernet port as you will never be able to saturate it
I would prefer to keep the cameras off of the WiFi. I don’t want them accessing the internet. I have never used containers before which Frigate will be on so hopefully there is a way to disable internet access to a container. Otherwise though the SBC comes with two 2.5Gbit ports and I believe my router is at least 1Gbit though regardless I plan to upgrade it.
that’s not about them accessing the internet or not (if you don’t have a dedicated VLAN just keep empty the gateway in their network config), it’s that at 2-6 mbits each, they saturate the bandwidth fast if everything is on the same network, especially wifi
Well I’ve certainly got a lot more learning to do and these projects give me something to apply my knowledge to. I’ll be looking more into Vlans and also how to beef up my throughput (if that’s the right term to use here).