2 ISP Router/Switch/Modem 1 cache-server/home-lab

[mzmarkib]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm a freelance web developer (intermediate level), and I am new to the networking, hosting, and Linux space. I thought I might pick the brains of the experts .

 

I have 2 internet connections, one for my work, and the other for everyone at home. So I want to set up a small-scale server at home. I want to be able to do the following:

• Set up a cache for both the internet connections, the main goal is to decrease the data consumption.
  • the most used sites would be YouTube and social media 
  • os and software updates
• Setup something like pi-hole to block adverts, etc
• Host websites, I was hoping to use Coolify for this.
• File sharing space
• NAS and Media 

I am not even sure if this is even possible. According to my research, I think it is possible with only one internet connection, I could be wrong. Could you all help me with this, please? 

 

This is a small diagram I came up with to explain my idea. I hope it helps.

As for the hard, I thought I might go with a mini PC with a J1900 or J6412 or N2840 or N2930 or J4125
I was thinking of going for one with 2 LAN ports:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32960318037.html
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005969648387.html
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003378019857.html

 

there are so many options, that I am confused. please help.

Please guide me on how to approach and tackle this.

[manikyath]

14 minutes ago, mzmarkib said:

Host websites

dont do this at home. especially for the price of propper datacenter webhosting the security risk makes no sense.

 

past that, if you actually want some performance out of this thing, dont go for some low power embedded system, and certainly not some off-brand mini pc.

 

- you realisticly want a CPU that actually has some horsepower, so that it can process requests quickly. where exactly this puts you depends on what sort of budget you're looking at.

- find a cheap case with room for several hard drives, so that you can put decent drives in there for the NAS and cache duties.

- mini-ITX boards with an onboard CPU are great for some purposes, but for a home server you cant imagine a more dead-end platform than something with 4 SATA ports, and one PCIe slot if you're lucky.

[Electronics Wizardy]

29 minutes ago, mzmarkib said:

 

I have 2 internet connections, one for my work, and the other for everyone at home. So I want to set up a small-scale server at home. I want to be able to do the following:

Are these from the Same ISP? Why do you have 2 here? Is reliability a issue? Speed?

 

Generally take everything into one router. Then have all device plug into that main router. Plug the cache and other servers into that main router, and use router settings to handle the multiple wan connections.

[TechJ]

If you want to do what you have in your setup it is possible. The simplest way to think of this would be two separate networks.

 

1. You would have the works based network, carve this out with an appropriate internal IP address space idk (10.0.0.0/16) then allowing you to segment this into smaller networks as you see fit. i.e. 10.0.0.0/24 10.0.1.0/24... 

2. You would then do the same and give you personal network another range. Likely nice to use a different 'class' of internal ranges here so maybe 192.168.0.0/24

3. Once you would have both networks setup the server can just have two physical nics that are configured for each network.

 

However, reason i'm being quite vague here.

Anything front facing on the internet should be firewall'd off and setup correctly in some kind of DMZ. As soon as your server is connected to both networks then you have a route into your personal network which you probably don't want.

 

So as others have mentioned. I would be looking to lab at home, and anything someone is paying for stick in either a cloud platform or a hosting service somewhere. It's not worth the hassle and you should just pass the cost onto the customer.

[mzmarkib]

On 8/5/2024 at 12:11 AM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Are these from the Same ISP? Why do you have 2 here? Is reliability a issue? Speed?

No, they are separate ISPs. The one for work is what I use. It is fast but expensive and limited. The other is what everyone in the family uses, it is slower but cheaper.  Sometimes we share the same content, I thought I would implement a cache server common to both connections so that I could save some data in the expensive connection, and also maybe speed up the home use ISP.

Also, what do you mean by reliability? Is it for the hosting?

I want to host the development sites to show clients and get their feedback.

[Electronics Wizardy]

14 minutes ago, mzmarkib said:

No, they are separate ISPs. The one for work is what I use. It is fast but expensive and limited. The other is what everyone in the family uses, it is slower but cheaper.  Sometimes we share the same content, I thought I would implement a cache server common to both connections so that I could save some data in the expensive connection, and also maybe speed up the home use ISP.

Also, what do you mean by reliability? Is it for the hosting?

I want to host the development sites to show clients and get their feedback.

Why not use the good work isp for the whole house? You can setup qos so your data gets priortized.

 

But one big router is probably the best solution here.

[Nuzicx]

Use 1 router to take both internet connections. Setup routing so that only VLAN 20 & 30 can use the work internet. VLAN 10 uses home internet.

VLAN 10 - 10.0.1.0/24 can only talk to VLAN 10 devices, place a server on VLAN 10 for media, nas, cache.

VLAN 20 - 10.0.2.0/24 for work devices and give them access to VLAN 10 to access server.

VLAN 30 - 10.0.3.0/24 is your public facing services like website, place it in a DMZ zone. Best practice VPN out and back for out of band access.