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!
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I believe I’ll need to use a second port to add an ePOE hub for a few cameras though.
You mean a POE network switch? You can run POE powered devices on the same network as everything else, so you don’t need an extra port for that.
Specifically POE security cameras. So those can be connected to my all-in-one router and thus to my server running Frigate? That’s good to understand. Thank you
They can only be connected to your router if the router has POE support. If it doesn’t, you will need a separate switch that has POE ports. Many POE cameras etc are sold with power injectors. You plug the Ethernet from the router into the injector, plug the injector into a wall outlet, then run Ethernet from the injector to the device. If you don’t want to get a whole new switch with POE ports, you could get POE that way.
Great to know. Thank you!
