I currently use a Reyee Whole Home Mesh WiFi System, AX3200, and a 3 TB AirPort Extreme that I use for file sharing (mostly Jellyfin right now).

The router works fine, but it lacks an actual firewall. It lets me block all traffic from any device, but that also includes LAN traffic.

The AirPort Extreme is outdated and only supports SMBv1 file sharing. This means that I am limited to Buster for my RPI if I want to mount my Apple drive.

I will, of course, do my research too, but I am hoping you all can help guide my search and help me answer questions I don’t know to ask.

For a router, I want the following features:

• Multiple WiFi networks (e.g., home network, guest network, and an IOT network)
• Gigabit LAN networking (or higher) as I’m using Cat6 for my hard-wired devices
• List all connected/configured clients, and even be able to rename them (most IOT devices default to some generic common name like AiDot)
• Ability to easily assign static IPs to devices
• WAN Firewall, while allowing LAN traffic (i.e. allow HomeKit enabled devices to work locally, but not call home to some shady server); bonus points if there is port-specific blocking.
• Device traffic logging (optional)
• Supports mesh networking

For my RPI NAS, I want to utilize NVMe m.2 drives, and was looking to use the NVMe Base Duo from Pimoroni. But I’m not sure which NVMe modules would be best. I was considering a small system drive (250GB or less), and one large drive (4TB) for the network storage part. I don’t want the cheapest (i.e. generic) drives, but I’d also like to avoid spending several hundred dollars if possible.

One question I have is if I could still use the microsd card for the system and maybe double up on two large drives for file sharing? Reading the docs does not answer this question for me.

If I can run both the microsd as a system drive, and the NVMe as a secondary drive, I’d probably prefer the singular NVMe Base instead. My main goal is to maximize throughput for file sharing.

Thank you in advance!