I’m in the process of designing a home server and am curious how many ethernet ports are required at minimum and how many people recommend. The single board computer (SBC) I plan to use has two built in and has a pcie slot to add four more if necessary. If I don’t need the four extra I’d like to use the pcie slot for a pcie Coral Edge TPU (preferred over the USB variant but still an option).

I expect to plan to use the server to connect to my home network so any device on the network via WiFi can access NextCloud. Besides that I want to use Frigate in another container for home video surveillance. I don’t know if I can or want to yet also add a Plex or Jellyfin instance to then connect to my TV or use a separate SBC for that.

What are your thoughts? I’m new to all of these things and just don’t want to waste money on the wrong hardware. Thanks!

  • FiveMacs
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    1 year ago

    Backup internet, eg two ISPs supplying internet to your house.

    Two (or more) seperate networks that need access to the same server. This is done so is network A is down, network B can still access the server.

    I still don’t fully understand your question. You NEED at least one rj45 to supply network access to the server. (I’m ignoring the fact that wifi exists)

    • sic_semper_tyrannis@feddit.chOP
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      1 year ago

      I didn’t know you could have to ISPs connected to one device. I won’t be requiring that however. I was wondering if besides the one port to connect my server to the router there was anything else I was missing or is commonly used that I should be aware of to take up another port.

      • FiveMacs
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        1 year ago

        Well they would be going to the router and the router would be handling it, but you could still have seperate feeds from the router on lan/opt ports to the device.dont think they will both function at the same time though, system needs priorities

        • grahamsz@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I’ve seen it done in data center environments where there are two connections to two different switches - so you can do maintenance on either switch without downtime.

          Same reason for having dual power feeds to each machine.