Home Networking Starter Questions/Recommendations

[theeprohobo]

My goal is to set up the pihole adblocker shown in a previous LTT video for my grandparents network (not very internet savvy), and eventually have it double as a media server for a NAS. (Just on the LAN, nothing too fancy)
I'm currently working with an ISP provided ARRIS NVG4438 modem/router combo with Frontier as ISP (no choice) and a NordVPN subscription.

Multiple devices will be connected via wifi.

So my questions are:

1. Should I upgrade my modem/router for this project? What to?

2. Can pihole and a media server be run side by side with each other?

3. Would using a VPN interfere with this project? Just change DNS settings or more complicated?

4. What sort of rasberry pi should I get for this usecase?

Any help/input is appreciated!

[Donut417]

5 hours ago, theeprohobo said:

Can pihole and a media server be run side by side with each other?

PiHole is like a full OS, and no I highly doubt the Raspberry pi can do VM's. Hell I used a Raspberry pi 3B+ as a main computer for a time (Mine was down) and it could barely surf the internet. So no you cant do that off the same machine, you would need the media server running on something else. 

 

 

[theeprohobo]

14 hours ago, Donut417 said:

> you would need the media server running on something else. 

Thanks for the knowledge, I guess I'll hold off on that part for now until I can come think up a viable solution.