After my last post, I have been tirelessly researching in Youtube, /r/homeserver, /r/homenetworking, /r/homelab (my favorite sub by far, just because it blows my mind that an entire community of people who scrounge for enterprise equipment as a hobby exists) on the best way to improve router speeds, set up a home network, the works.
There have been a few changes:
- Forget a DIY router from old computer parts. All things considered, it might even run slightly more expensive than the "convenient" solution outlined below and require more manual effort. While it'd be an interesting exercise, I've done enough desktop building and EE projects that the experience wouldn't be very valuable.
- Instead, experienced home networking peeps have directed me to entry-level enterprise networking products from a company called Unifi. (Also, this is the second most entertaining Arstechnica article I've ever read. First place goes to the review of the shitter Walmart laptop that's not even good for literally anything computing related.
- raspbian-ua-netinst is a good idea, but turns out testing the process without a real Pi might be a hassle. Requires QEMU, some kernel patching, and a bunch of other stuff that's way too much work to justify the payout. Might consider TinyCoreLinux. I just want a headless server that fits on a 4GB SD card, man. The diet-pi that's currently installed might still be "good enough" for a barebones headless server. Way less of a struggle than keeping up with a PiHole.
- RIP silicon supply. Mechanical hard drive discounts are unsurprisingly rare right now, so I might as well reuse the old one I have. Research suggests using an externally powered hard drive for the Pi's server drive, just because it's more reliable. This is the only externally powered hard drive I have as well. I haven't accessed the content on it in a long long time, so I won't miss it too much. If I do, I can scp whatever I need over.
Recommended reading for anyone else interested in setting up their own home network or changing to a real router, not your TI-83-tier consumer router: