It can be a good idea to mentatlly seperate your router needs with you 2.5G speeds and WiFi needs, they dont have to live on the same device. For you private lan you need a router so you can hide and control your devices behind NAT and firewall. For that I’d just recommended one of the small hap or hax devices that suits your needs for routing, and/or wifi. If you want to be fancy the RB9005U could maybe work with your switching need as well.
You don’t need Vlan. I believe it is not what you think it is. Vlan is if you want to segregated your own lan int to different independent lans with various firewall rules.
All you need for your dorm is NAT. But for the love of god make sure that you dont connect your lan with the dorm lan or your DHCP server will start handing out IP’s to everyone else in your dorm and it will crash the dorm router. The ethernet jack in the wall of your dorm (I assume that’s how it works for you) needs to go to the WAN port of the router. But bare in mind on mikrotik you can configure the WAN port to be any physical port you want, but with default config it is port 1.
tychosmoose@lemm.ee 1 week ago
That isn’t what I would choose for your situation. CRS3xx switches are fast at switching (layer 1 & 2), but not as a NAT router, which you probably need.
Better to pick something from the Mikrotik Ethernet Routers range, assuming you don’t want your personal LAN to have WiFi. The L009 or basic RB5009 are both good options in the same price range. Choosing depends on your upstream connection speed. Both are fanless.
Or pick a Home/Office Wireless device if you are permitted to have your own WiFi access point. The hAP ax2 is small, affordable and performs well at 1Gbps. If your upstream connection is 1Gpbs this is probably what I would choose even if you don’t want WiFi as long as this is enough ports. Just turn off its WiFi radios to use it wired-only. If you have a 2.5Gbps upstream port then hAP ax3 is a better choice.
All the Mikrotik choices will require some learning if you want anything beyond a basic router configuration. But once you get it like you want it they are very solid and reliable.
OpenWRT and OPNSense are easier to jump into without a lot of effort, so if you don’t want a networking hobby I would use one of them. Pick up pre installed device if you want it easy. Or get a mini PC with a few network ports and install the OS yourself to get more power for the money.
Scrath@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
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.
tychosmoose@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Sure. That plan would work. You might want to be sure that this is permitted at your university.
Universities often have strict rules about what should connect to their networks.
Scrath@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
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.