My Linksys router died this morning - fortunately, I had a spare Netgear one laying around, but manually replacing all DHCP reservations (security cameras, user devices, network devices, specific IoT devices) and port forwarding options was a tedious pain. I needed a quick solution; my job is remote, so I factory reset the Netgear (I wasn't sure what settings were already on it) and applied the most important settings to get the job done.

I'm looking for recommendations for either a more mature setup, backup solution, or another solution. Currently, my internet is provided from an AT&T ONT, which has almost everything disabled (DHCP included), and was passing through to my Linksys router. This acted as the router and DHCP server, and provided a direct connection to an 8-port switch, which split off into devices, 2 more routers acting as access points (one for the other side of the house, one for the separated garage, DHCP disabled on both).

If going the route of a backup solution, is it feasible to install OpenWRT on all of my devices, with the expectation that I can do some sort of automated backups of all settings and configurations, and restore in case of a router dying?

If going the route of a smarter solution, I'm not sure what to consider, so I'd love to hear some input. I think having so many devices using DHCP reservations might not be the way to go, but it's the best way I've been able to provide organization and structure to my growing collection of network devices.

If going with a more mature setup, I'm not sure what to consider for a fair ballpark budget / group of devices for a home network. I've been eyeing the Ubiquiti Cloud Gateway + 3 APs for a while (to replace my current 1 router / 2 routers-in-AP-mode setup), but am wondering if the selfhosted community has any better recommendations.

I'm happy to provide more information - I understand that selfhosting / home network setup is not a one-size-fits-all.

Edit: Forgot to mention! Another minor gripe I have is that my current 1 router / 2 routers-as-AP solution isn't meshed, so my devices have to be aware of all 3 networks as I walk across my property. It's a pain that I know can be solved with buying dedicated access points (...right?), but I'd like to know other's experiences with this, either with OpenWRT, or other network solutions!

Edit 2: Thanks for the suggestions and discussion everybody, I appreciate hearing everybody's recommendations and different approaches. I think I'm leaning towards the Ubiquiti UCG Ultra and a few Ubiquiti APs, they seem to cover my needs well. If in a few years that bites me in the ass, I think my next choices will be Mikrotik, OPNsense, or OpenWRT.

I feel like I'm losing my mind. A few days ago, all of my containers running on Docker Desktop on my Windows Server host were working nicely. I had NFS volumes set up on a few of them to reach my synology NAS on my local network, and things were working fine. I've done so much digging and tweaking over the last few days, so I can't be certain where all I've broken this connection further, but I woke up one morning and the containers that all had connections to my NAS via NFS volumes were no longer working. I hadn't restarted my host, I don't know what changed. Containers like NPM that I had set up for my internal DNS would no longer redirect to any IP that wasn't within my docker network (for example, I run Plex NOT in a container on my host PC). I had all of my containers on the default bridge network, and now nothing on this docker network can connect to anything on my local network.

I've tried setting static routes in my router, changed a lot of configurations, dug through tutorials, guides, and posts all weekend, but I couldn't make any progress in figuring things out. I'd really appreciate some help on this one, and can provide more details, logs, compose files, when needed. Just don't want to dump everything at once

Duplicate thread over on reddit https://reddit.com/r/docker/comments/15qaotn/cant_ping_local_network_from_inside_containers/

Edit: For anybody looking for a solution, I bit the bullet and installed proxmox. Running my docker containers on an Ubuntu VM now. Linux Docker seems to be working much better now. I suppose the answer is just "run Docker on a Linux OS," since Docker on Windows seems to be limited. Plus, it gives me something new to play around with.