Home Networking as a Hobby Gone Crazy

[amirm]

I'm absolutely confused what is this? Just a computer on steroids? Why would you need more than one router for home and what is a NAS, just hard drive? My apologies but I am fascinated to what purpose this holds compared to just a standard PC.

As explained, NAS is a way to have shared storage that is more reliable than what is in your computers. NAS systems have redundancy for storage and by being on the network, you can access them anywhere in your home (and some allow access outside). I for example have my music library and all my measurements on my NAS.

You only need one router. But may wind up, as I have, have multiple switches. I also have Power over Ethernet (POE) capable switches to power our security cameras.

I also have a rack mounted switch. So it does add up although not really close to what the OP video has as a hobby.

 

[pierre]

As explained, NAS is a way to have shared storage that is more reliable than what is in your computers. NAS systems have redundancy for storage and by being on the network, you can access them anywhere in your home (and some allow access outside). I for example have my music library and all my measurements on my NAS.

You only need one router. But may wind up, as I have, have multiple switches. I also have Power over Ethernet (POE) capable switches to power our security cameras.

I also have a rack mounted switch. So it does add up although not really close to what the OP video has as a hobby.

One benefit for me to have multiple switches and routers, is to have failure tolerance. I dont want to be multiple days without internet when a switch goes down. I also have multiple internet providers since each one is super slow. Similar to Amin, i have a PoE switch, a 2.5Gb/s and a 10 GBb/s switches that all can do some routing. If i started anew, i would have only 2.

I usually start tidy but the stack is now in this mess:

Spinorama btw in running at 50% on one of the 2 mini pcs.

 

[MatrixS2000]

Stacking up access points and switches makes you learn zero about networking other than 1970s spanning tree 101 basics and wifi wavelength contention.

There is a lot more learning that can happen than just spanning tree. I will just mention a few here including some other basics - VLANs, port security, link aggregation, routing protocols (they are L2/3 switches), access control lists, ip addressing and subnetting, QoS, networking monitoring and troubleshooting, configuration management, and basic network security.

Since there was also a firewall, add - NAT, VPN, DMZ, firewall rules and policy, intrusion detection and prevention, traffic flow and monitoring between vlans and network segments.

This is not what I would call a typical home network, but before I retired from the networking field, my home lab had more but was never as neat at that.

 

[somebodyelse]

to me it is not a hobby. it is my profession. and mesh access points are useless stacked next to each other. set them up for needed coverage. the video clearly is about a *lab*, not a home network. and as a lab, i miss a full featured router there.

Exactly. Of course what you need in the lab setup depends what you're working on at the time. Some years back I had more SIP phones than I had rooms, all on one desk. This was to test integration of the phone models with the software PBX, not because I needed them for my home.

 

[EERecordist]

Mine is not obsessively neat or costly. I would say I'm guilty of recreational home wiring. I have one or more keystone wall plates in each room, and RG7 which will never be used. I really want to throw an optical splitter in in front of my ONT and do some sniffing.

 

[pablolie]

Mine is not obsessively neat or costly. I would say I'm guilty of recreational home wiring. I have one or more keystone wall plates in each room, and RG7 which will never be used. I really want to throw an optical splitter in in front of my ONT and do some sniffing.

Having a home lab is great. But making your actual home network far more complex than it needs to be only invites frustration. The more equipment, the higher the probability of failures, the bigger the attack surface, the more stuff someone can inadvertently mess up, etc etc.

I keep things as fast, simple and secure as I can and that's it. The only thing that may be a step further than most do is that I have a DMZ set up between the Internet and my home network, with honeypot and all. It entertains me to see what some hacking tools try to do.

 

[Doodski]

I have a DMZ set up between the Internet and my home network, with honeypot and all. It entertains me to see what some hacking tools try to do.

Too funny. Do you have the skills to reverse hack a bad actor?

 

[pablolie]

Too funny. Do you have the skills to reverse hack a bad actor?

I have done it, but it gets old. There are tools that allow one to do so. I just find it funny to see what targets they pick. If you have set up 3 fake computers (as virtual machines running on that server) and one is Dad, one is Mom, and the third is Nina with a pic of a hot teen, they will 80% got to that one, and if they hack it, they'll pick the "Private Pictures" directory (which contains encrypted files with a multitude of viruses in them :-D).

 

[Doodski]

I have done it, but it gets old. There are tools that allow one to do so. I just find it funny to see what targets they pick. If you have set up 3 fake computers (as virtual machines running on that server) and one is Dad, one is Mom, and the third is Nina with a pic of a hot teen, they will 80% got to that one, and if they hack it, they'll pick the "Private Pictures" directory (which contains encrypted files with a multitude of viruses in them :-D).

Too FunnY! You triggered my asthma laughing cough.... Hehe.

 

[Bruce Morgen]

I just use an ordinary old PeeCee running Win10 to host my music files. Why any home network environment would need something more complex or specialized is a mystery to me -- I just play the files from the shared drive with Winamp or VLC over Ethernet or WiFi, depending on the playback device.

Am I missing something by not implementing something fancier?

 

[pablolie]

I too have a small swinging rack that hosts my NAS, switches and patch panel. I guess if I had more space, I would stuff it more too.

NAS I see more as yet-another-computer-used-as-storage rather than networking. I have 2 Synology NAS. One acts as a DMZ, the other is my real NAS for all things. Switches I have exactly one. Supports 16 2.5G ports, more than I'll ever need. My place is much smaller these days, and while I went through the trouble of having at least two Ethernet wall sockets in every room (Cat6 throughout the place), I admit I only use 2 of those: for my working environment, and for the music/media system. Everything else is wireless, convenience tends to win.

I do have an enterprise class router (Juniper MX204), but it's just for lab stuff. It is waaaaay too feature rich for a home environment. And even though it's 7 years old, 400Gbps is more than I need at home (plus I am quite energy conscious).

 

[pablolie]

I just use an ordinary old PeeCee running Win10 to host my music files. Why any home network environment would need something more complex or specialized is a mystery to me -- I just play the files from the shared drive with Winamp or VLC over Ethernet or WiFi, depending on the playback device.

Am I missing something by not implementing something fancier?

The original post shows it's a lab for a very ambitioned hobbyist but most likely IT professional that loves to master complexity. Absolutely nothing will be faster or safer if you go that way. Quite the contrary: It's more devices that need to be kept current for security, more devices that can croak, more cables someone walking through your lab can mess with and a higher power bill for no functional benefit.

Keep things simple and follow best security practices and no one needs more. I deal with enough complexity during my workday, I'd rather just chill and keep things simple at home.

 

[pablolie]

One benefit for me to have multiple switches and routers, is to have failure tolerance. I dont want to be multiple days without internet when a switch goes down. I also have multiple internet providers since each one is super slow. Similar to Amin, i have a PoE switch, a 2.5Gb/s and a 10 GBb/s switches that all can do some routing. If i started anew, i would have only 2.

I usually start tidy but the stack is now in this mess:

Spinorama btw in running at 50% on one of the 2 mini pcs.

Networking racks always start look neat and deteriorate some over time.

As to internet redundancy - if my Comcast connection goes down, my AT&T smartphone is a very capable and surprisingly fast alternative. My home network automatically switches over as soon as I enable it as a Mobile Hotspot in such situations.

 

[Berwhale]

As to internet redundancy - if my Comcast connection goes down, my AT&T smartphone is a very capable and surprisingly fast alternative. My home network automatically switches over as soon as I enable it as a Mobile Hotspot in such situations.

The last time this happened to me, it was a power cut and we lost all the cell towers as well (but this is such a rare occurrence, that it's not really a concern for me)

On the other hand, having dual WAN capability on my old ASUS was useful when I was working from home during COVID lockdown and I switched from a copper connection to fibre internet. I was able to get the fibre on-line with no loss of connectivity and I run both internet connections for a month in parallel. Terminating a copper line has implications for your landline phone in the UK and the extra month allowed me to transition my number to a SIP provider (I have a SIP gateway with dual POTS and Ethernet capability, so that switch-over was fairly painless as well).

 

[Randyman...]

No crazy equipment-room racks for me - but Ubiquity and TrueNAS see much implementation at my abode. Started with a single UniFi WiFi AP for better coverage, and arrived at my modest yet very capable system.

One 26-port "USW Enterprise 24 PoE" switch handles dual 10G connections to primary NAS and Desktop (both with fast RAID-6 / RAIDz2 arrays), and 2.5Gig links to secondary NAS and ancillary PC's, with 1Gig ports for PoE Cameras and whatever else.

Ultra Cloud Gateway handles routing the 3 VLANS (an isolated IoT VLAN is an absolute MUST if you value the security of your network) and hosts UniFi OS (previously ran on the TrueNAS as a plugin). Then, 3x hard-wired UniFi AP's for WiFi - and the whole system is reliable, offers fantastic WiFi coverage (no mesh needed, all wired backhaul), and is as FAST as I could ever hope. I can saturate my 600mbps Fiber Internet connection over WiFi! No issues with 25+ WiFi devices (mostly IoT things) - and can handle dozens more w/o breaking a sweat. The remote administration is really cool, and the included VPNs (4 flavors) are hassle-free and totally cost free

UniFi has a neat topology view as well:

The way their Firewall rules work is a little different from Cisco IOS etc, but is perfectly functional. I'm really impressed with Ubiquity overall.

Also a big TrueNAS fan over here - and it's FREE! TrueNAS has been consolidating both Core and Scale platforms into a single Fangtooth build that is very capable. I started with TrueNAS 11 a while back (my previous NAS's were always Windows w/Hardware RAID before that), upgraded to v12, and now the unified v25 Fangtooth project really refined it and took it to the next level! Just re-built my primary TrueNAS (re-configured numerous things in the process including new RAIDz2 with SSD cache and 10Gig connection) and used the newest Fangtooth build, and it is solid - bar none.

I remember when 1Gig was "enough" and even "wow". Not today. 2.5Gig and beyond are commonplace in even the smallest micro-PC's these days. And securing your network with VLANS is no longer just the domain of IT Admins.

 

[bluefuzz]

My only indulgence into slightly OTT networking is a Turris Omnia router which is a custom wifi router specifically made for running OpenWRT. Other than that I have a NUC running a few Docker containers and a QNAP NAS with my media on it. I could in principle run most of the containers on the NAS but it's a bit slow and I'm not too keen on QNAP's proprietary software.

 

[amirm]

I remember when 1Gig was "enough" and even "wow". Not today. 2.5Gig and beyond are commonplace in even the smallest micro-PC's these days. And securing your network with VLANS is no longer just the domain of IT Admins.

Yeh, I had been living with gigabit Ethernet thinking that is all I need. Well, our ISP has speeds up to 1.4 gigabit so just upgraded to 2.5G on my key machines. My backbone is now 10G for good measure.

 

[Berwhale]

Yeh, I had been living with gigabit Ethernet thinking that is all I need. Well, our ISP has speeds up to 1.4 gigabit so just upgraded to 2.5G on my key machines. My backbone is now 10G for good measure.

I did the same and I was able to upgrade devices without 2.5GbE very cheaply with parts from AliExpress.

M.2 2.5G Ethernet LAN for Micro Form Factor PCs. These go in the motherboards M.2 slot and replace the M.2 Wi-Fi adapter if there is one. The RJ45 socket attaches to the punchout on the back of the chassis: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006117118223.html

USB 3.0 2.5G Ethernet adapter. I used these instead of the 2x on-board 1GbE adapters in both my Synology NAS. The USB NICs are also handy for laptops if I want to copy a lot of data or rebuild one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005721491964.html

(The USB NIC requires drivers on the Synology)

It all works perfectly, and SMB transfer speed increased from ~115MB/s to ~300MB/s between my clients and the NAS. It seems like a worthwhile upgrade for relatively little outlay.

 

[Randyman...]

I did the same and I was able to upgrade devices without 2.5GbE very cheaply with parts from AliExpress.

M.2 2.5G Ethernet LAN for Micro Form Factor PCs. These go in the motherboards M.2 slot and replace the M.2 Wi-Fi adapter if there is one. The RJ45 socket attaches to the punchout on the back of the chassis: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006117118223.html

USB 3.0 2.5G Ethernet adapter. I used these instead of the 2x on-board 1GbE adapters in both my Synology NAS. The USB NICs are also handy for laptops if I want to copy a lot of data or rebuild one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005721491964.html

(The USB NIC requires drivers on the Synology)

It all works perfectly, and SMB transfer speed increased from ~115MB/s to ~300MB/s between my clients and the NAS. It seems like a worthwhile upgrade for relatively little outlay.

Small world - I just installed a M.2-to-10Gig SFP+ Intel 82559 LAN adapter for my TrueNAS last week as it only has a single PCIe x16 slot (mATX), and that slot is used for the LSI SAS card. The 10G SFP+ is unrestricted in the M.2 PCIe x4 (3.0) slot. I didn't even know these existed until I accidentally ran across one in my search for a 10Gig SFP+ card that would work in a PCIe x1 slot (and with the associated bandwidth cap). Glad I kept searching lol. TrueNAS recognized it instantly - no fuss.

And another "small world" coincidence - I also used an Asus USB3-to-2.5Gig adapter on my "bridge the gap" temporary TrueNAS system while I was upgrading the main TrueNAS build. That USB adapter stayed saturated above 260MB/s during 12TB of transfers w/o a peep! Sped-up the temp backup-dump by over 2x over using "old" Gigabit . Was also a little surprised that TrueNAS had zero configuration issues for this USB-to-Ethernet adapter. TrueNAS Fangtooth seems even more "plug n' play" friendly than Windows in some regards

 

[Berwhale]

That USB adapter stayed saturated above 260MB/s during 12TB of transfers w/o a peep!

I have read that these adapters can get a little toasty, especially the ones with the older (non-B) chipset. I have secured mine to the back of my Synology in the middle of one of the exhaust fans to give it some airflow.