Thanks for the setup tips, especially about the masquerade rule and safe mode.

I’m not too worries about the loss of speed since internet here in germany is on average slower than 250mbps and anything data intensive like access to my Mediaserver should be handled over Ethernet anyway. If it does become an issue I can always throw a second AP at it I guess?

I’m not sure how to find out whether it has two access points. Performancewise I believe the specific model I have selected should be fine.

Thanks. I wasn’t sure about the VLAN thing so that’s one of my main reasons for this post. I will probably buy a VLAN capable router anyway because I am pretty into home automation stuff and the ability to separate the IoT traffic and play around with networking a bit seems nice

I read about the issue regarding the halved connection speed somewhere but I don’t believe that will be an issue. Considering the average internet speeds here in germany are below 250mbps I don’t expect to saturate the WiFi connection even with half speed. Anything data intensive like accesses to my mediaserver will primarily be over ethernet.

I’ve heard about DMZ before but I never knew what it was. That will probably not be an option unfortunately. While I don’t know what router is currently used by the other residents I assume it will be either a FritzBox (which allow some configuration but are mostly idiot proof routers that are very popular here in germany) or a locked down router by the ISP. On neither case will I be able to configure a DMZ.

Regarding the WAN port, I was planning to use the stock RouterOS from MikroTik but I believe that the router can be configured this way already without OpenWRT.

Ah that makes sense. I thought I needed the VLAN to separate my network out from the rest.

I am a bit confused about your last paragraph though where you mention 2 APs. Do you mean my private AP and the AP used by the rest of the apartment or do you mean that I have to get 2 APs?

One question in regards to your noise comment: What drives are you running? I have a synology with 2 toshiba mg08 16tb drives and those things are unbearably loud when reading or writing. A lot of that obviously comes down to the drives themselves but I also kind of blame the plastic chassis for probably resonating with the noise and not being better at soundproofing.

My personal reasons for buying a synology were ease of use, reliability and power usage.

I had previously played around with TrueNAS in a VM using an external USB HDD Enclosure for storage and I just wanted something reliable. With TrueNAS I often ran into issues with user permissions one way or another and the Synology software is incredibly easy to use and foolproof.

Is that supposed to be a con? I don’t even use 4 bays currently and would be perfectly fine with a 4 rackmount NAS. 7 HDD bays sounds great to me

That thing looks almost too good to be true for 500. What’s the drawback?

Not available in europe? (It actually is available, I just checked)

Loud as fuck?

Bad Software?

Welp, guess I definitely won’t be buying synology again in the future. I was planning to transition to a rackmounted NAS at some point and synology is overpriced in that category anyway but this puts the final nail in for me.

It’s a shame because I quite liked the simplicity of their UI.

If you are in germany, thalia lists whether a book has DRM

I may have misused the word dorm. It is a shared appartment rented with a couple other students.

My goal is basically to set up a private network inside the network used by the other people I share the apartment with so I can tinker with stuff like setting my own DNS server up for the network without possibly impacting the other people in case of failure. My naive impression was that I would need to use a VLAN to accomplish that.

In regards to your idea of using multiple devices I kind of agree but I want to keep the initial cost and energy usage low for now which is why I am trying to find a device I can use for this but also reuse in the future for something else if I want to upgrade (or just retire it without too much sunk cost).

Ah I may have misused the word dorm. It’s more of a shared appartment rented by multiple students so there aren’t any limitations in that regard fortunately.

Wow, that was a lot more comprehensive than what I was hoping for. Thanks.

I was particularly interested in the CRS310 because it had 2.5G ports with the ability to eventually later even expand into 10G. 10G speeds aren’t really relevant for me (for now) since I mainly want the speed advantage for slightly faster transfers to my NAS but I would be interested in 2.5G capability. Do you think it makes sense to pick one of the devices you recommended, specifically the hAP ax2 and then if I want to get into 2.5G territory to buy an unmanaged 2.5G switch? Speeds of 2.5G and more are only interesting for transfers between my own local devices for me. I don’t need the rest of the network to have fast access so I guess the hAP ax2 makes more sense to buy than ax3. The ability to open my own WiFi network is also quite attractive so I can have local access even from my laptop or phone which I guess is another point in favor of the Home/Office AP route.

Hey, this is off topic from the original post but could you tell me what device specifically you have used?

I am going to be moving into a dorm soon and was looking to set up my own VLAN or ehatever you need for a private network because I don’t want to mess with the dorm router. I had a look at a Mikrotik switch (CRS310) but was unsure whether the fan noise would be too loud if I am staying in the same room and more importantly, whether this even allows me to do what I want to do

Edit: I misused the word dorm. It is a shared appartment rented with a couple of other students.