I’ve been self hosting for years, and am familiar with many of the topics here, but it’s still an interesting read for things like talking about breaking out the three part router yourself. I’m really glad he out this together because it means I can see what others do in detail, even if it’s NOT the 100% recommended way (OPNSense, wireguard, etc)

On one hand, I agree that having a small overview with links to make this non monolithic would go a long way to making this functional and less scary.

On the other hand some information is scattered fairly heavily. Take the switch discussion. He mentions a 15 dollar switch, and then the upper end 1000$ switch early on, to emphasize the range. It’s not until a much much later section he talks about the more practical 20$ switch or 400$ switch he’d use here. So it being monolithic aides Ctrl+F to find this segmented info.

He also mentions the capability/value of having a manged switch (the latter switch is managed) specifically with VLAN, and yet doesn’t to my mind ever state why/when I would do something with the switch management to that end. As far as I can tell, many newer switches will pass VLAN tags (even when unmanaged) from the router, which will enable you to offer a WAP with split SSIDs so you could use something like TP-link 8 port 2.5gb unmanged switch (which at 100$ seems like a meaningful bridge between the 15$ 4 port 1 GB switch, and $400 16 port 2.5gb, 8 port poe switch). He talks about PoE & speed merits but IMHO doesn’t really cover the significance of a managed switch other than saying it had features for vlan (even though the cheapie would pass VLAN tags)

What does the managed switch offer me for VLAN? Specifically just the capability to isolate certain ports so specific hard lines are mapped to a certain vlan?

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Edir: i see this was already mentioned.

Not sure if you meant the video, or written guide, but for the written guide -

OPNsense is not even mentioned.

When we build a router using a standard computer, we can install router software like pfSense or OPNsense,

There’s a bit of a debate between pfSense and OPNsense. TL;DR, the developers of pfSense are not the nicest people sometimes. If this bothers you, consider checking out OPNsense. Since I’ve been using pfSense for a decade, I’ve built much of my infrastructure around it. I am well aware of its quirks and don’t feel like setting up my network from scratch, so I am using pfSense for this tutorial. Regardless of the developers, you are infinitely better off using pfSense on your own hardware than standard routers.