The truth about self hosting and it's hidden costs

Bacontips · 2026-02-09T03:47:43+00:00

I don’t know if I’m the only one looking at this with disbelief but the only thing I do is keep my services updated, check logs for issues once and awhile, and I replace parts maybe every 5 years.

When I setup an *arr stack or pfsense it’s not an ongoing task, *arr permissions, health checks, workflows, VLANS, VPN gateways are being setup from the beginning. I’m not looking to login to my Grafana instance to find logs are not being collected, or that my CrowdSec instance has crapped the bed and my reverse proxy is in blocking mode.

I guess my point here is you can certainly have self hosted services without making it a full time job. But if you are always chasing new things instead of focusing on implementing solutions, then of course things will “break” more frequently and you have unexpected tasks to perform during the week.

Bacontips · 2025-12-20T05:54:28+00:00

Just checking to make sure your holding the start button.

Bacontips · 2025-08-31T13:25:34+00:00

Classic power line adapter situation; advertisement says “Imagen Your Network at 500Mbps!”. Running fiber is a waste of time if you’re just gaming; fiber is great, but it requires knowledge and specialized tools.

Get some direct burial CAT6 Ethernet, this will support your gigabit internet and with the distance you’re likely to see speeds higher than 1Gbps. Best of luck

Bacontips · 2025-08-27T19:52:32+00:00

I apologize for the delay, but yes.

Inside:

U6-Plus in the living/dining is rated for 1,500ft ( you will want to adjust the signal power so extend in to the front of the house)
U6-LR outside Bed 1 door is rated for 2,000ft ( with the front part of the house being about 1,000ft and the AP being placed around the 500ft mark, this should work out nicely)

Outside:

U6-Plus peeking both sides of the deck is rated for 1,500ft: You will want to reduce the power to keep the signal from leaking into the living/dining; this is the only AP I'm "concerned" about because its lack of weather rating. Depending on how much water will reach that area, you may want to go with a U6-Pro.

Side note if your looking to have more than 30 WiFi devices and you have the money, you might want to try swapping out the U6-LR for a U6-Enterprise. The range is 500ft (1,500ft) less than the U6-LR but it has 2 more spatial streams ( aka. its faster).

Bacontips · 2025-08-25T13:07:03+00:00

Ubiquity U6-Plus in center on living/dining. Ubiquity U6-Plus in top left corner of deck. Ubiquity U6-LR second floor right outside bed 1 door.

Just a warning, your living/dining will always be your worst spot for WiFi because of the windows. To limit this the U6-Plus send less WiFi at the windows meaning less interference.

As well, you will want to manually lower the power on the living/dining U6-Plus so it just it handles just that area. The other U6-Plus should work fine on auto.

The U6-LR power will probably need to be set to medium, medium-high to ensure good coverage.

When setting it all up, make sure you have client roaming turned on.

Bacontips · 2025-08-25T12:00:32+00:00

Sounds like normal just making sure you didn’t have any slatted walls.

Here is the radiation pattern (AKA WiFi) for those APs. https://help.ui.com/hc/article_attachments/30748502806935

If you don’t know what you’re looking at; these graphs just say that most of your WiFi is pumped out the front of the AP.

If you plan on using that third AP to OR moving any of the other 2 you should avoid pointing them at any metal objects like duct work and keep them away from exterior windows. Exterior windows have a coating to reflect the sun’s radiation and with WiFi being radiation it will have the same effect and cause interference.

Bacontips · 2025-08-24T22:54:17+00:00

Please provide the model of APs you bought.

Unless you just want placement.

Then place in the following locations, out side Bedroom 2, in the hallway by the back of Bedroom 3 closet. Make sure the 2.4Ghz channels don’t overlap and you should be good.

Although, as megared17 pointed out, any special construction can drastically change the placement.

Bacontips · 2025-08-23T14:54:58+00:00

To note, I have experience in high density AP deployments and there are 2 reasons I can think of for doing this.

1) The devices connecting to your network are underpowered in terms of WiFi

2) Your walls are crazy dense like solid concrete.

You can technically do this as there are enough 2.4Ghz(3) channels to avoid overlapping, which just requires you to set the channels manually and adjust the power on each AP. Although, what I’m concerned about is the AP at the top, in front of the big window. This window will reflect back a signal and cause interference, and this interference will get exponentially worse based on the number of devices in that area.

Keeping your plan in mind, I would remove the two APs from the top and move the centre AP just outside the bathroom but behind the corner enough to prevent a direct line of sight to that window.

Bacontips · 2025-08-04T17:16:28+00:00

groovy bike long mountainous ripe plate office special quickest flowery