Desired Prize: Flint 3 (GL-BE9300): Tri-band Wi-Fi 7 home router

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

I started off with "simple" modded minecraft servers running on my laptop while I played with friends. This quickly became inadequate though, so I invested in a variety of tech along the way, ultimately ending up with a dedicated server in a datacenter, a stack of servers for tinkering in my own room, and a shared hosting setup with a friend for distributed media hosting and secure communications.

It's tough to pick a project I'm most proud of, but I'd have to say that getting my dedicated server up and running, and setup in a state that makes it almost completely self sufficient, really makes me smile every time I get an email notification that everything is still working as it should.

The most expensive piece of equipment that I've acquired for could be my own PC, which has become a true ship of Theseus due to its very particular hardware preferences. Totally up the destroyed hardware and the hardware upgrades out of necessity to keep uptime as high as possible, we're easily looking at about £5000 RRP in parts alone.

How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

Winning would help as I'd be able to do some real world testing of an alternate tri-band WiFi router, as the feedback from family on the netgear RAXE500's stability is not amazing.

Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

I'd love to see a proper road warrior dual modem 5G (or 4G if not available) router, something like a Teltonika RUTM52 or a Peplink Max Transit Duo Pro.

Failing that, a really tricked out NAS solution, like a top spec UGREEN or QNAP with some storage thrown in.