Dave

Thanks, yeah I will consider the options. Would be nice to have it in one as the raspberry pi is aging (it's an original model B) and the gateway should be plenty powerful enough to run it, plus it would rule out the pi-hole to router connection as a possible reason for the unstable network.

I had been considering the Dream Machine Special Edition, though the website lists it as $500 but it's gonna cost more like $750USD if I get it locally 😅. At least it's available locally though, unlike some of the others listed in this thread which are gonna be hard to get.

Well I was hoping to spend the same amount and get one that does everything I wanted 😆. I'm happy with separating things if it make sense, but I have two power points and already have too many devices in that spot (fiber connection modem + ISP router + two raspberry pi's (one for pi-hole, one for home assistant) + a switch + RF sensor for detecting doorbell + more I'm probably forgetting). Some of these are powered from USB ports on other ones. Being able to replace the ISP router with a gateway that's also a switch that also handles the pi-hole would mean three of those devices become one, and it seems feasible!

Thanks! I'll put it on my list 🙂

Thanks for all the info and the detailed response!

But it sounds like you only need it to be a wired router, which is good.

Correct, don't need wifi.

PoE ports as a requirement is what narrows your options considerably I think

I'm happy with doing this through a separate switch, but I'm happier if I can have less things to plug in. It's not a must have though.

Mikrotik has a lot of routers with PoE out. Their newest model in the RB5009 series can do either passive or 802.3af/at PoE out. Many of their older routers have passive PoE only. Make sure you know what your cameras need.

I don't have cameras yet, but I'm considering some Reolink ones. Happy to take suggestions. Am I likely to find a lot of difference in the PoE type or are most things compatible with each other?

I'm not overly against keeping them separate. It's just I have a lot of stuff piling up and consolidating would have been nice 😆

One of the things I use pi-hole for is to set customer DNS entries so anyone on the network will be redirected directly to the self hosted services when the type in the appropriate domain name. So it's not just about the filtering (which I also want), but also the (network wide) custom DNS entries.

I'm also happy with simple. I'm not overly against keeping the pi-hole and gateway separate but was just wanting to know if combining them would be an option (which is sounds like it is, but not super easy).

It's a little bit more complicated than I made out. For one, the network is super unstable and restarting the ISP router seems to fix it. I want to replace the router to test the theory that it's the problem.

Secondly, this is a bring your own router to the ISP situation, but the router came from another ISP, but they are all the same ISP in the end because one company owns a whole bunch of ISPs and sends the same router to all the customers of all the child companies. Long story short, it's the router they would have issued to me, but they didn't, because a different subsidiary sent it to me before I changed ISPs to take advantage of a special because I live in a country where the lines are open and anyone can start an ISP using the existing lines but if you get big enough to be competition then the big company will buy you out and pretend it's still a separate company. But if it doesn't work well then it's up to me to solve unless I am willing to pay the ~$10USD for them to send me the ISP router that is supported by them but it will be the same cheap router as I already have. Ok that's not a very short story but that's why it was easier to just call it an ISP router 😆

Thanks! I'll check it out.

Thanks! It seems OpenWRT was the magic word I was needing.

Thanks, so what I should look for is a gateway running OpenWRT, which can run docker?

I have one of these: http://www.riitek.com/product/254.html

The back has a keyboard, the front has programmible buttons for the TV (mostly just used for on/off), and the rest is a bunch of buttons connected to the PC.

I use it with Kodi but it's a pretty user friendly way to control it once it's set up.