Once upon a time, I was doomscrolling on Reddit, like everybody does, and stumbled upon /r/homelab. And my brain exploded.

Why is that? Well…

Yet another hobby incoming…

A few things about me:

  • Computer hardware & software, I like
  • I like to tinker, learn
  • I was hosting a few websites and apps on a server I was paying for every month
  • I’m partly responsible for the hosting infrastructure at work (AWS)

I knew it was possible to have a hosting infra at home, but I always thought it would be too complicated and costly. Until I saw some cute homelabs on /r/homelab.

The more I looked into it, the more I got sucked into it. Shopping for new (to me) hardware, playing with it, discovering new software, managing a network, managing servers/VMs/containers, having full control of almost every aspect of the infrastructure, no more hosting fees…

I continued to scroll /r/homelab, to check what people do, what they host, what hardware & software they use… Then I drafted a plan.

The plan

I didn’t want much to begin with:

  • Host websites & apps at home, both public and private
  • Get into smarthome stuff with Home Assistant

Given how everything wants to hack you nowadays, hosting public websites would expose my infrastructure and could be dangerous. I wanted to be able to configured my network properly to limit potential hacks. The router from my ISP was clearly not up to that task.

Regarding the computing power, it turns out you don’t need much, especially if only hosting simple websites or apps. I won’t be doing anything intensive like video processing, AI slop, mining, huge datasets processing. A mid-range, 10 years old CPU is way enough for that. One thing to pay attention to is RAM usage though. But that’s easy and cheap to upgrade (well, it was cheap, before the 2025/2026 memory chip shortage caused by the fucking AI bubble).

After spending too much time on reddit and googling around, I drafted a list of items needed for an “MVP”:

  • A good router, that can do VLANs.
  • A WiFi access point that can handle VLANs as well (1 WiFi network per VLAN) - could be combined with the router
  • At least one computer/server where I can host websites & apps
  • A network switch, as I want most of my devices wired in. It has to be a managed switch, to handle VLANs.

As I wasn’t sure yet if I would fully commit to this (I was clearly lying to myself), I looked into how I could achieve this the cheapest way possible. The plan was simple:

  • Use free software for the routing part (Pfsense or Opnsense, 2 very robust and feature-rich routing platforms and firewalls)
  • Use free software for hosting: Proxmox is very popular for this, it’s an hypervisor for managing VMs and containers. Can be installed on almost any computer.
  • Pfsense can run as a VM in Proxmox, no need for dedicated hardware (well, kind of)

So I would need:

  • 1 computer with 2 ethernet ports - for both hosting and routing
  • 1 managed network switch, with PoE, 10 ports if possible
  • No WiFi needed for now as I already had a WiFi router, no VLANs but it would be good enough for testing. I knew I could configure it as an access point only.

About PoE, or power over ethernet. I discovered this while browsing reddit. It can carry power over ethernet (no! really?). You don’t have to provide separate power to your devices, just 1 ethernet cable, which I find pretty handy. It’s used for IP cameras, WiFi access points, or even raspberry pi with a PoE hat. I thought it would be a good idea to spend a little bit more to get a switch with PoE, for future proofing.

The computer-router conundrum

Theoretically, my custom router would sit between my ISP router and my network. That means I need a computer with at least 2 ethernet ports, one goes to the ISP, the other to my network (which would be the managed switch).

(Technically, you can run what’s called “router on a stick”, where your routing platform runs on a machine with only 1 network port. But that complicated things a little bit, and I felt like I was already pushing it with running Pfsense in a VM.)

The other limit I set to myself is to find a desktop computer in a “micro” format, mostly to save space. A second benefit is to be slightly less power hungry compared to “regular”-size units. The device will be running all the time, so it’s a benefit worth having.

I did some more research and found a pretty good solution. Those micro computers often use an M.2 WiFi card. It’s possible to replace that card with an ethernet NIC card, to provide a second ethernet port.

Speeeeeeeed

Before buying hardware, I had to think about network speed: 1Gbps, 2.5Gbps, 5 Gbps, 10Gbps.

Obviously, high speeds are attractive, but the majority of hardware on the market is still designed for 1Gbps. I had no devices supporting higher speeds. The computers I was looking at all had a 1Gbps network port. 10Gbps network switches are more expensive than 1Gbps. So I made the responsible choice of aiming for 1Gbps.

Second-hand hardware is great

I found everything I needed on Facebook Marketplace. It’s very easy to bitch on Zuck’s toy, but Marketplace has become the main place to find used goods, at least in my area. You can find anything on there.

That’s where I found a Dell Optiplex 3040 Micro for a decent price, with a i5-6500T with 8GB or RAM. Clearly not a crazy machine, but it’s way enough as a starting point.

The managed switch with PoE was a bit harder to find at a good price, probably because of how “niche” it is. Nevertheless, I found one. It’s pretty old, but it’ll do the job. I won’t rely on it for security really, that’s the job of the router. If someone somehow manages to hack my network switch, it’s already too late.

The hardware has evolved a little bit since I started, checkout the dedicated article.

Not had enough? Check out the other Homelab articles