Thanks everyone for the suggestions so far, I should probably give a little more background information. Upon further thought I don’t see any reason why I can’t just cancel the other internet subscription and have the internet come into the same home with the server room. Let’s call that H1. Initially I will connect just one additional home (H2) and in the future possibly H3. I have a server rack; I’m not sure exactly how large it is but it’s probably about 22U. It was previously used for audio equipment (at a mobile radio station van interestingly) so it doesn’t have a rear rack mount which I may need to add.
I’m quite tech savvy and eager and willing to learn new things. In the past 6 months I started out with an old office computer as a NAS running TrueNAS Core just for Plex and quickly transitioned into a more powerful Dell Poweredge server running TrueNAS Scale with approximately 20 self hosted applications at the moment with plans for more. It likely won’t be long before I want a more powerful NAS too, but that’s besides the point. I have also been diving deep into learning Linux as well. So I have a little bit of knowledge of FreeBSD from TrueNAS Core and a fair bit of Linux knowledge. I’m not afraid to dive into documentation and would be willing to learn something like pfSense or OpenSense. I’m okay with, and interested in, learning something new to save some money.
Currently I have a 24 port keystone patch panel, and a Dell PowerConnect 5524 24 port gigabit switch with two SFP+ modules. My plan would be to either use direct burial fiber between the houses, or trench a tubing such as HDPE to run the fiber. Depending on pricing I may just use 1 GbE transceivers, but ideally I’d prefer 10 GbE between the houses (if not now, then I’d swap the transceivers in the future). Also in the future I plan to add a few (3-5) cameras at H1, likely powered via PoE. I know my PowerConnect isn’t PoE, I figured I could plug a small PoE switch into it.
For mesh wifi, currently my ISP provides 1 eero for free with our wifi subscription (per house but I’m canceling all but one subscription). It is an eero Pro 6E. I’m not set on using eeros, but I’ve liked them so far. I’m up for eeros, or TP-Link Decos, or any other suggestions.
I assume the router in the server room of H1 will not be an AP, so I’ll just have the mesh AP’s provide the WiFi.
H2 and H3 will not need complicated networking equipment, just at least an 8 port switch in each house (I assume with SFP+ for the fiber connection back to H1).
Questions:
Do all the AP’s have to be wired to the switch at each house, or is there any way they can be wireless? For example, I know if 1 eero is wired, the others can be wireless to that eero.
I like the idea Enigma mentioned, about having a 4th SSID that all the APs share across the houses. This is not necessary, but very interesting as the three houses are all family and we frequently walk between the houses. I assume for that, you would just change your phone to the 4th SSID? Would this allow devices to connect back to the individual home’s SSID’s? I assume not but I’m curious.
Do I need a PiHole for each home? Or just in the server room?
In summary, the important things are that each home has its own VLAN (and maybe even three, one for guest, and one for IOT devices), every home should have direct access to the NAS for Plex and other services. The NAS also will be serving self hosted services and applications through cloud flare zero trust tunnels to my domain. I currently have and will continue to have a Static IP unless I figure out how to serve Plex without one (my ISP has CGNAT).
Thank you everybody, I appreciate the advice and help