As I get further into this world, I keep learning new things. Case in point, evidently some isp's routers simpl do not allow the use of custom DNS addresses. That this is a horrible abuse of power and a limitation of freedom is a topic for a different sub, but for now it raises a question...

What budget friendly device would you recommend for a home user to place behind thebisp router and take over all possible functions previous managed by the ISP router?

For my purposes I'm aiming for picking up something second hand, most likely arouters with the standard functions... 4 port ethernet switch (bonus for higher speed supported since my lan transfer speeds are mediocre), wireless AP, and... Critically... As open and customizable as possible. (Maybe even supporting openwrt or similar?)

My goal is to have my home network services end up in a place where if I move I simply plug all my gear into the new USP router which is set to passthrough mode... And everything resumes working.

Top notch gear isn't needed for such a simple use case, but I'd rather not experiment multiple times to eventually find a cheap old router that works well.

Thanks!

I've done quite a lot of research, but I'm still stuck on which direction to go. And it seems that there are so many varieties of use cases that generic advice in videos and articles just isn't going to do the trick.

So, I'll present my use case, and maybe if I'm lucky someone else here will have had that particular use case and can give first hand advise.

I'm looking to rebuild my server, and while I love the concept of nextcloud as a central service to access and share files, I've been rather disappointed with how it handles photo management.

For reference in case its useful, I'm aiming to host whatever solution is recommended on docker.

My environment is that I have a single root folder in my data server which holds all my photos and videos from my entire life. These are arranged by year, and then by month, and then by event. E.g. 2022/05/erinswedding 2022/05 2022/06 2022/07/floattrip 2022/07

I primarily take photos on my cellphone, but occasionally backup other devices like gopro footage to the same location.e.g. 2022/07/floattrip 2022/07/floattrip_gopro

I emphasize this, because I want this storehouse of photos to remain the master repository of all my files. I dont mind if a photo management service creates and index or additional directories elsewhere (I.e. thumbnails, etc) but I want my main location to remain valid and otnits current order.

I am looking for two primary features... 1. To be ablento use my phone anywhere in the world to pull up a speedy and responsive gallery of all those old photos and videos in my repository. (This osba feature nextxloud has fallen short in my experience. The retrieval of thumbnails takes a very, very long time) I dont even mind it if the service asks me to cache lowresolution thumbnails locally on my phone for better performance. Although I'd rather it not.

And 2. I need to have the photos taken onynphone be automatically backed up to my server when thr phone is pluged in and connected to WiFi. And ideally I'd like to be able to specify the naming and organizing rules applied. Namely, I either want to have thr initial backup be directed into the proper folder (year/month) immediately... Or I want to have it directed into a "incoming backups" folder so that I can periodically organization them into the proper folder structure by hand. (This is mainly because of my use of event subfolders, I don't see an easy way to have the program decide when that subfolder creation is needed)

Secondarily I'd like to be able to easily share photos and albums from my server to others. Ideally with just a link meaning no account creation is required. And with various features like expiration and password protection. This will mainly be used to give a person access to photos from group events. Being able to accept uploads of their photos as well would be a bonus... But I'm not sure how that would be handled ar a filesystem level. I wouldn't want to pollute my main repository with photos taken by others without an easy to identify sub folder e.g. 2022/07/floattripfrommary

In the future I can see a use case for expanding my server to accept multiple users, so my family can each have their own accounts that each allow for remote viewing, nightly phone backups, etc... But that isn't a pressing concern right now.

In addition, it would be lovely to have some more modern tools such as facial recognition and objects or scene detection, maybe location tagging. As an example, I had cause recently to look for photos i took a few years agoandd it would have been great to type in "photos of cardboard boxes in arkansas before 2023" and have the program surface the needed photos.

Duplicate detection would also be quite handy as I go through old photo sets and try to ensure they are unique.

Lastly, I do have some folders of security camera images... And being able delete all the boring images at once would be handy. But that might be a separate software run on demand rather than part of the management service.

I think that's the big issues... Please let me know of more specificity is needed anywhere.

I've been deep diving on photoprism, immitch, next cloud memories, piwego, and others such as syncthing coupled with servwr scripts to move files into my folder steicture. But I'm lost in the massive feature sets of thr big name photo management players.

Thank you in advance.