I might probably have the option to get a second 10gbps symmetric ftth connection (8 guaranteed though) with a different provider (I have orange, 1gbps symmetric, they don’t offer 10gbps in my area yet), for only 25€. That would be with Digi and if you use some kind of referral codes, there’s a 5€ discount for 10 months (and subsequent discounts of 5x10€ for each person you might refer in a future).
As you see, it’s tempting and cheap enough to get an independent line just for the beta (and probably the mainnet after October), and do not block my personal connection, which I also use for work.
So now I would like to get some hardware (or at least consider options).
I have a raspberry pi 4 with a 1tb nvme (which is used through USB and probably not fully using its bandwidth), that I also use as pihole/Adguard, VPN (very little to no use) and minidlna (also very little to no use). Even if it’s pretty idle and I’m using it for 40 nodes of the last beta, that it seems to be able to handle (I see CPU spikes to 16 which means 100% but it’s usually around 6-8 (50%, and I don’t really get the number because it has 4 CPUs, but I guess it’ll be scaled to threads or something like that). Anyway nothing has exploded and I have good cooling and heat sinks).
As said, looking for something more appropriate and liberating my rpi4 for local home use and playing like in the past, I was considering these options:
- RPi5, with SSD/nvme (probably get a cheap SSD for the rpi4 and reuse the 1tb nvme I have there). Probably 125€ with case, fans and sinks + whatever I spend on the disk. Let’s say under 200€. I foresee CPU bottlenecks here, same as with rpi4 and moreover network is capped at 1gbps
- Intel NUC with i7: I’m seeing gen8 second hand ones for 300€, with 32gb RAM and 512 nvme. I think the bottleneck here would be the network. Is there any option to plug something to use more than 1gbps?
- Look for other options. Something with 2,5g Ethernet? Something with 2 Nic’s and do bonding? Whatever option sounds too expensive
- Combined option, recycling + buying something cheap: I also have a rpi3 doing nothing (it’s actually plugged but shutdown). So use rpi3 for “home purposes” (pihole + OpenVPN + minidlna), and move the rpi4 to the autonomi only connection (so I expect 40 to 50 nodes here), get the gen8 nuc, which due to the i7 I expect to be way more powerful and not have a bottleneck in CPU any more. From here, consider where (whether) to move forward.
I like the last option best. Is there any other hardware you’d consider? Yes, I could get proper servers (actually a friend offered me a couple for free) but they’re noisy and they would go to a guests’ bedroom, not that I have many visits, but a noisy fan kind of blocks it, that’s why I was thinking of the nuc and the raspberries all the time…
Sorry for the long post and the much thinking aloud.
Edit: nuc gen11 second hand, i7 and 2,5g Ethernet for 450€. Only 16 gb of ram and 256gb of disk (I would recycle my nvme anyway).
Yet another edit:
AMD Ryzen 7 5700u, same box size as the usual Intel NUC’s, 16gb ram, 512gb M2 SSD (not nvme), 2x2.5gb Ethernet, for roughly 400€, shipping included