One. Use a switch for networking.

Remember a homelab can be anything from multiple rack mounts humming along in your basement to just SBC running some clever Podman containers. Everyone's wants, needs, and interests are different.

Sounds like most of what you want to do could be done with one or two machines, a decent switch, and some kind of Wi-Fi access point. There is no wrong or right way to do it.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 7 acronyms.

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i didnt have a problem with network ports (I use a switch) what I shouldve considered during purchasing was the number of drives (sata ports), pcie features (bifurcation, version, number of nvme slots)

I need to do high IOPs for my research now and I am stuck with raid0 commodity SSDs in 3 ports.

The cameras are on the same network, or worse, on the same WiFi?

If everything is on the same WiFi, then you need a single gigabit Ethernet port as you will never be able to saturate it

I have 6 ports on my main server and I used to use them all just because I could, but I only really use 3 these days.

1x 10gbe for file server access, plex, downloaders, nextcloud etc.

1x 1gbe for DNS (Adguard Home), home automation stuff, web hosting, etc etc.

1x 1gbe for VMs

I could do them all with one 10gbe and split out subnets with Vlans in software, but I like dedicated connections where possible as it is easier to manage and monitor.

If you are looking to run a plex or jellyfin server it is usually best to use a dedicated player for those (nvidia shield, apple Tv, chromecast GTV etc..) as they always tend to have better support for things like multiple HDR formats and things like Atmos or DTSX compared to running a DIY HTPC box.

Unless you're planning on virtualizing your router on the server (think OPNsense VM or something) then really only one ethernet port is required. Otherwise the sky is the limit. For example, mine has a 1 Gbps port, a 2.5gbps port, and two 10 Gbps ports.

Depends on what you want/need and whether you want to future proof I guess.

For what it's worth, I have a server with two rj45s (and a third for BMC), but I only plugged one of them into my switch. I run anywhere from 2-8 containers/vms on that server and never felt the need to hook up the other jack. I guess there's probably some contention of running multiple hosts all through that one connection, but typically I don't really need anything faster than the ~2-400mbps I get with WiFi anyway. So to answer you question, it depends, but I would generally say maybe start with the one and don't worry about it unless you're really moving massive amounts of data regularly and saturating your line. You'd also need to consider you'll need a switch and other network hardware capable of handling that throughout as well if you're really going to potentially saturate those ports.