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.
That makes more sense.
I actually missed that you mentioned the nighthawk in your post somehow, I bought one in 2020 so I wouldn’t have to rent Comcast’s but that’s what I’m currently using. If you have your own wireless router that broadcasts on the frequencies you need with the SSIDs that are already in your various devices you can almost certainly just throw that into AP mode and then just connect it to pfsense once it’s configured and not miss a beat.
I’d also recommend getting your own modem(arris surfboard s33 is my recommendation) if your ISP allows it