Q: Why did you make this? A: The homelab must grow. ¯\(ツ)/¯

Nice.

That depends on your area. These machines are not available new (at least not at a reasonable price) but they are readily available refurbished for around 35€ (4gb ram) to 50€ (8gb ram) per piece in Germany.

I am certainly not an expert by any stretch. But here are my reasons: Ability to isolate some “sketchy” IOT devices into an IOT only vlan, where they are not allowed to access the rest of the network, only the internet and incoming traffic from the other vlans. Having a “clean” vlan/subnet for servers and services where I can give out static IPs without worrying about collisions with client devices

Exactly. You could say it was unnecessary, but I think we have crossed that line a long time ago.

No. But segregation into vlans has advantages. As this comes with new adresses anyway, might as well tidy up the adress space entirely.

In the end 10.20.20.10 feels much neater than 192.168.174.10.

But yes, you are right, technically the 192.168.xx.yy adress space works the same and has plenty of space for home use.

I attempted to move my whole 192.168.x network without vlan to a new 10.x network with vlans. I am still tracking down services and devices where I hardcoded in the old 192.168. ip adresses.

No. I only have a limited amount of time for maintaining my home infrastructure. I chose my battles.

There are machines (like the Futro s740) that can be powered by POE as well.

In this regard: here is a comparison of all the Lenovo tinys: https://github.com/a-little-wifi/TinySecrets