Your home network

[Ignitionnet]

Just curious if anyone has an especially elaborate home network?

Mine right now is extremely simple. I may work from home but don't take work home IYSWIM.

I know of network guys with loads of kit at home; I prefer to keep the kit quotient to a minimum so have what I need and nothing else really.

So who has half a data centre at home and, if you work in IT, do you really love it so much it is a hobby too?

[qasdfdsaq]

Yes to all of the above.

Although I don't so much have IT as a hobby because I love working in it, I started working in it because I already had it as a hobby.

I find myself regularly making excuses to add more kit that I don't really need.

Not especially - I am in IT Management now, so obviously I know nothing technical....

Main VM cable comes into the corner of the lounge, which connects to the SH1 (router mode, 2.4Ghz wifi).

Cables come out of the SH1 to
- Cat5 cable that goes back outside the house, and goes to the upstairs office.
- Powerline Adaptor1
- 5 port gigabit switch, which connects to Tivo, BluRay, Xbox

Powerline Adaptor1 connects to Powerline Adaptor2 in the dining room, which is connected to a Tenda N60 (2.4 and 5Ghz)to provide wifi coverage to that side of the house and the right hand side of the back garden

Cat5 cable (from above) in the office connects to a 5 port Gigabit switch, which feeds a Linksys Router for wifi for that side of the house upstairs, main house PC, and a HP printer.

A wifi extender in our bedroom (upstairs) to provide wifi coverage to that side of the back garden.

Devices connected are two PCs (one cable, one wifi), three laptops (all wifi), 2 iPads, a Nexus 7, a HP Win8 tablet, 3 x iPhones, 1 x Samsung S3, Xbox360, BluRay, TiVo, Apple TV, and various guest smartphones.

Security is WPA2-PSK, with only authorised MAC addresses allowed.

[Qtx]

Think it depends on what you call an elaborate setup. I don't see mine as particular complicated but I guess it's a bit more involved than the usual setup of just a client or two connecting to the internet through the isp router. I use my central storage box as a gateway for some machines so they can connect through it's VPN to encrypt their connections and get around geo restrictions etc. A few other unusual routing things I do internally too.

Lots of my devices have DLNA so I can use my phone or tablet to send music/video from one device to another in any room, so that stuff gets used a lot. Also Not just across the network, the AV receiver often gets used for streaming internet radio. Plugins the laptop and phone means I can send a video im watching on say youtube on those devices and send it to the tv or media players instead, or another plugin tells the NAS to download it instead. Using Yahtse remote on my android phone or tablet as a remote for XBMC, I can press a button and the video pauses on the tv and plays on the tablet instead, lots of fun things like that. If my mobile gets a phone call its set to pause the movie im watching as well as display in the corner of the tv who's calling. Also set to popup in the corner if I get emails/messages or whatever with who it is an a snippet of the message but doesnt pause in that case. Don't bother having multiple servers on the network like I used to. The NAS box has enough services and things like SQL running it to not really need a separate server and most things can be done in a VM on the fly these days. If it wasn't for the Synology NAS I use, I would have got the microserver to run a few vm's.

A lot of people get in to computer related work because fiddling with technical things interests them, so it kinda makes sense that they do it at home as well as work. So I guess you could call it a hobby.

Wake on Lan is used for a few things, port knocking and lots of different network type stuff like that. You can have a nice nice network related setup without having to have a lot of equipment really.

Router plugs in to a Netgear prosafe gigabit switch (love those metal box's) and between the two has Onkyo AV, sat box, PS3, Smart tv, Synology NAS an powerline adapters. Other rooms has powerline adapters with a few also having Cisco SE2500 gigabit switches (nice for bedrooms as there is a button to turn off led's) which then connect up to tv's, computers and Raspberry Pi's as media players. Throw in Laptops, android tv sticks, mobile phones, wireless printers, wireless repeater, secondary wireless routers.

Saying it like that it does seem like a lot of equipment but it doesn't feel like there is, if that makes sense.

[Hom3r]

My SH1 connects to a router which has 2 wired devices and 19 WiFi devices (not all at the same time).

I use the android app called fing monitor what is connected, you can assign icons and rename what is connected.

Nothing over complicted, though probably a little more than most.

The Cable Modem and Sky Modem connect to a two way ethernet switch (Normally I use VM, Sky is a back-up). This then connects to the D-Link router which in turn connects to a four way ethernet switch to supply the three PC's local to me. Everything else in the house connects to the router via Wi-Fi. The Sky Modem also connects directly to the work Laptop when I work from home.

[General Maximus]

I thought it would take too long to try and explain how I have got stuff laid out around the house so I made a diagram instead (although I think it took just as long)




Edit: just realised I made a boo boo, there isn't a wired pc downstairs. I haven't included any wireless devices as well.

[techguyone]

You don't appear to have a router or modem either, unless 'sky' is it.

[Ignitionnet]

I don't actually have any more equipment than is required to support my usage.

Obviously the 2 Openreach modems which go into my load balancing router. The only other network kit is a switch lurking behind the TV and a wireless AP.

The devices are the usual mix of TV, Blu Ray, games consoles, phones, tablets, etc, with the only exceptional things being a microserver and a full size one in the office.

[General Maximus]

Originally Posted by techguyone

You don't appear to have a router or modem either, unless 'sky' is it.

really? I thought there were three wireless routers in that diagram

[Jon T]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Yes to all of the above.

Although I don't so much have IT as a hobby because I love working in it, I started working in it because I already had it as a hobby.

I find myself regularly making excuses to add more kit that I don't really need.

Pretty much sums it up for me as well.

My home network is:

Upstairs spare room/office - Superhub 1 with wired connections to two PC's and one microserver(running omv), and occasionally a parallel HP jetdirect printer server for my HP LJ1100.

Downstairs - A WRT-54G router running DD-WRT in access point mode, bridging the wireless back into wired, it enable me to connect me SKY HD box and my LG Blueray player my network.

I have a Sony Xperia Z1, partner has a Galaxy S2.

I also run Fing on Android.

EDIT: Should also state that I normally would use the Superhub as a modem only, but my router went U/S and I haven't got round to replacing it yet.

[peanut]

Quite handy just having a one bedroomed flat sometimes.

PC rigged into the AV for TV out with full DTS etc sound. SH2 wired to PC, Voda's SureSignal box and to Xbox 360.

Wireless to a couple of laptops, Squeezebox, ipad and phones using home network from the PC. Any more than that seems a waste.

[General Maximus]

Originally Posted by techguyone

You don't appear to have a router or modem either, unless 'sky' is it.

here you go, this should be better. I hope you'll take note of the lightning for VM's "lightning" fast broadband

[techguyone]

That's much clearer thanks

[qasdfdsaq]

I had an old diagram like that for mine, but it's a bit out of date now, plus it only really focused on the internet connections side rather than the internal side:

http://qasdfdsaq.com/images/misc/Int...onnections.png