[HN Gopher] My network home setup - v4.0
___________________________________________________________________
 
My network home setup - v4.0
 
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score  : 262 points
Date   : 2023-02-09 14:00 UTC (8 hours ago)
 
web link (giuliomagnifico.blog)
w3m dump (giuliomagnifico.blog)
 
| fy20 wrote:
| Can someone recommend a budget WiFi access point with long range?
| I only have LTE as the backhaul, so the fastest speeds are not a
| requirement.
| 
| I bought a EAP610 which I saw recommended on Reddit, but the
| range seems worse than the ISP modem's (something Huawei) built
| in WiFi.
 
  | KaiserPro wrote:
  | for a normal AP, then I'd get a second hand ubiquity LR off
  | ebay.
 
  | thakoppno wrote:
  | My advice is tangential but run an ethernet cable. Access
  | points aren't great at long distance. Setup an AP in the far
  | away room on the other side of the house. It will be far less
  | frustrating.
 
  | bityard wrote:
  | I bought a Netgear WAX218 a few months back for around $100...
  | but a quick look around shows that either the price has gone up
  | significantly or they're not making them anymore? Well, if you
  | manage to find one for a decent price, I highly recommend it.
 
  | duxup wrote:
  | I am a big fan of Netgear's Orbi line. Really I think distance
  | is more of a relative/ location issue and a mesh system that
  | allows you to move the satellite endpoints around to suit your
  | needs is very useful to figure out the optimal situation for a
  | given environment.
  | 
  | https://www.netgear.com/home/wifi/mesh/orbi/
 
| aliljet wrote:
| Very curious, what if you had a 10gbe symmetric connection from
| your ISP? How would you modify your deployment?
 
  | giuliomagnifico wrote:
  | ...well I think it takes a long time before we will have 10Gbe
  | in Italy (we still don't have 5Gbe), anyway I'll use only
  | another router and switch, with 10gb ports, but the issue in
  | this case will always be the wifi antenna of the (i)Devices
  | that are still below 1Gbps, so the AP will not need a swap at
  | the moment.
 
| Thaxll wrote:
| Is it working fine to have IOT on a different vlan, lot of IOT
| use weird protocol ( mdns, multicast etc ... ) that are not
| friendly with vlan? I know that some people have issues for
| example with the Chromecast being seperated since it needs
| internet but also be able to communicate with your phone on a
| different vlan.
 
  | Jiocus wrote:
  | Multicast doesn't cross between IP _subnets_ - it doesn't
  | necessarily have to do with VLANs, strictly speaking. But yes,
  | in practice                   VLAN--subnet
  | 
  | Make sure IGMP is enabled. Devices join IGMP groups to announce
  | they want to receive mDNS
  | 
  | - IGMP snooping
  | 
  | - IGMP proxying (if offered)
  | 
  | Depending on your router you might find helpful options like:
  | 
  | - mDNS reflector
  | 
  | - mDNS repeater
  | 
  | - any mDNS + description of multiple networks (Unifi)
  | tcpdump -i  host 224.0.0.251 or port 5353 -A
  | 
  | Like others mentioned, Avahi is solid but the multicast
  | reflection/repeater/relay must run on the device routing
  | between the VLANS in question.
  | 
  | Disclaimer: Deployed and networked thousands of Chromecast at
  | several hotel chains and their wildly variable enterprise
  | networks. Wrote my own mDNS repeater-as-a-packet-rewriter to
  | fine-tune TXT records.
 
  | chomp wrote:
  | Yeah, avahi will help you out quite a bit there, but I
  | personally pick my IOT devices to where they will not have
  | requirements like that. I'm pretty #nocloud with anything I put
  | in my home, so the majority of IOT devices I have go on the
  | null routed VLAN and are perfectly happy.
 
  | syntaxing wrote:
  | My IoT VLAN is one way only (main VLAN can talk to it, and it
  | can talk back BUT it cannot talk to any other VLAN on its own
  | accord). No issues with mDNS or multicast. I redirect all DNS
  | request as well to nextDNS with masquerading. I have probably
  | 30 devices on it? Zero issues with home assistant and HomeKit
 
  | candiddevmike wrote:
  | Assuming you have a linux machine connected to both networks,
  | Avahi can reflect/forward mDNS multicast traffic, so you can
  | have your chromecasts on a separate network and be discoverable
  | by devices on a different one.
 
  | rbranson wrote:
  | IoT VLAN indeed can be annoying. It's getting better as a lot
  | of the more "prosumer" grade routers are supporting it. I use
  | Sonos at home too, which means I had to deploy this into a VM
  | to bridge the VLANs: https://github.com/alsmith/multicast-
  | relay.
  | 
  | There are some funny (?) things that turn up too, like learning
  | the Roku remote iOS app "discovers" devices by opening a TCP
  | connection to every address in parallel on its local /24 (!!!).
  | It sends out and receives mDNS packets that would tell it
  | exactly where they are, but they are ignored by the app.
 
| hnburnsy wrote:
| I use a separate router and old phone without a sim card to
| manage my IOT devices, got sick of Amazon continually scanning my
| network and adding my printers without asking.
| 
| I know it happens but I hate that these devices probe my networks
| and report on what they find. Is there anyway to stop this
| discovery?
 
  | artificialLimbs wrote:
  | Hardcode IPs and disable broadcast traffic. But really VLANs is
  | the answer.
 
    | hnburnsy wrote:
    | Thank you, I wonder how many IOT devices support entering an
    | IP address directly.
 
  | depingus wrote:
  | > Is there anyway to stop this discovery?
  | 
  | The correct way is to create VLANs. Then use the router's
  | firewall to prevent devices in the IOT network from reaching
  | into your other networks. Not all consumer network hardware
  | supports VLANs though.
 
    | hnburnsy wrote:
    | My separate router allows me enable 2.4 G which many IOT
    | devices need but keep my main router at 5 G only.
 
      | depingus wrote:
      | That's a good idea when you're just working with what you
      | might have on hand. But if you're buying something,
      | consider going a step above consumer network gear. There
      | you'll find wireless access points that let you configure
      | multiple wireless SSIDs on mixed or isolated radios...all
      | at the same time.
 
    | hnburnsy wrote:
    | Thanks I meant the discovery on the IOT LAN or VLAN.I don't
    | need Amazon knowing that I have a Tesla charger
 
      | depingus wrote:
      | Gotcha. You can never tell how an IOT devices is scanning
      | your network. It could be passively listening for broadcast
      | messages, or it could be actively scanning all the private
      | subnets.
      | 
      | So, you probably need an access point that can do "client
      | isolation" or "layer 2 isolation". This would prevent
      | clients on the same wireless SSID from talking to each
      | other.
      | 
      | For example, looks like the Ubiquiti access points can do
      | it. https://evanmccann.net/blog/2021/11/unifi-advanced-wi-
      | fi-set...
 
        | hnburnsy wrote:
        | Thanks for the great info.
 
| skrtskrt wrote:
| how does someone learn the basics of "home lab" or small-scale
| server setup, particularly networking?
| 
| I'm pretty familiar with managing compute & storage, but the
| networking is largely a mystery to me. I've read a bunch of
| CompTIA study materials but it was all very abstract
 
  | ovi256 wrote:
  | I think you would benefit from an "Introduction to Computer
  | Networks" type class
  | 
  | It will teach you what a switch and a router do, the difference
  | between LANs and WANs, what DHCP and DNS do. The different
  | ISO/OSI layers involve, TCP vs UDP.
  | 
  | Then you'll be able to setup a home network without issues,
  | because you'll know the different moving pieces and how they
  | fit together.
  | 
  | This is a textbook that's used in such classes
  | 
  | https://intronetworks.cs.luc.edu/current2/html/
  | 
  | From the syllabus, this Coursera class looks OK:
  | 
  | https://www.coursera.org/learn/computer-networking
 
    | jobs_throwaway wrote:
    | Anyone have a MOOC or other course on this topic they've
    | taken and would reccomend?
 
  | mewse-hn wrote:
  | In the context of the linked article, the easiest starting
  | point would be to get a managed switch like the Netgear GS308T
  | in the article, and then feed the data into grafana for pretty
  | graphs. From there you can start branching into more complex
  | topics like vlans, wifi, etc
 
  | ye-olde-sysrq wrote:
  | Tbh a lot of it can be as simple as:
  | 
  | - get computers. laptops, desktops, raspberry pis, custom-built
  | ("whitebox") servers, old dell poweredges you got off ebay, etc
  | etc. Install linux on them.
  | 
  | - plug servers into switches, switches into switches, and
  | eventually into your router. Don't create cycles in your tree
  | (unless you know your router/switches support it (STP), and
  | unless you paid $1k for your switch, it doesn't support it)
  | 
  | - Figure out your router config to assign them static/reserved
  | DHCP IP addresses so they always get the same IP.
  | 
  | - put those IPs in your hosts file. (optionally, set up a DNS
  | server.)
  | 
  | - ssh-copy-id your ssh key to all servers
  | 
  | Now you have a bunch of machines you can ssh to. Which imo is
  | the most basic definition of a homelab.
  | 
  | Lots of people get super creative and use fancy routers and
  | switches and enterprise gear and do complicated networking and
  | etc etc etc but all that stuff is just good fun and not
  | necessary.
 
  | giuliomagnifico wrote:
  | Best thing I think is "do it", because when you need to fix an
  | issue you learn new stuff, I have never done dedicated studies,
  | also because each system has its own particularities, so you
  | can learn the basic but then the names and operations may
  | change a bit from one to another brand.
 
| dgroshev wrote:
| Some things I realised after going through my OpenWRT and later
| OPNsense phases:
| 
| - complexity is fun to play with during the initial setup, but it
| sucks long term
| 
| - VLANs and inter-VLAN firewalling is needlessly complex, brings
| endless frustration*, and you shouldn't trust the network to do
| your auth anyway
| 
| - letting a vendor to do something is Actually Good
| 
| - dashboards are useless, I can't recall ever using them for
| anything
| 
| So I sold most of my networking gear and replaced it with
| 
| - Aruba Instant On fanless PoE switch and a bunch of their APs
| 
| - a PS100 Topton fanless PC box with VyOS on it, powered with a
| PoE splitter
| 
| - a UPS
| 
| No VLANs, simple flat network. Everything internal is either on
| Tailscale or behind auth. Everything is PoE, things that don't
| are on PoE splitters, so no power bricks and everything is UPSed.
| Arubas require zero configuration and are managed through a cloud
| portal. The router needed to be configured once and required zero
| intervention for close to two years. It's ridiculously
| performant, perfectly balances load, and just works.
| 
| *: I _really_ have better things to do on a party than debugging
| firewalling an obscure protocol Airplay uses when my guest can 't
| Airplay from their phone
 
  | zrail wrote:
  | That sounds like a really nice, simple setup. I have an
  | unfortunate mix of gear from different vendors, but my setup is
  | broadly similar. VyOS on an old SFF box, PoE whenever possible,
  | etc. My physical topology means I need more layers of switches,
  | though, and I do have a single vlan for my work machine.
  | There's no inter-vlan routing there, just internet.
 
| justusthane wrote:
| Very neat - thank you for documenting this, especially the piece
| about using Avahi to place the HomePods on a different VLAN. This
| is something I'm planning to do but hadn't looked into yet, so
| this will save me a lot of effort.
| 
| Just out of curiosity, that's the black box in your cabinet
| balancing on the metal cones?
 
  | giuliomagnifico wrote:
  | Thanks!
  | 
  | >Very neat - thank you for documenting this, especially the
  | piece about using Avahi to place the HomePods on a different
  | VLAN. This is something I'm planning to do but hadn't looked
  | into yet, so this will save me a lot of effort.
  | 
  | Yes, it's very easy if you use Avahi, but it's important that
  | you're using VLANs and not subnets, because I had lots of
  | troubles using a separate subnets for iot devices and the
  | HomePod in the main subnet. You have to add a route on the
  | router and tweaks the firewall. Using vlans instead is easier
  | and faster.
  | 
  | >Just out of curiosity, that's the black box in your cabinet
  | balancing on the metal cones?
  | 
  | Italian ISP modem "unfortunately". If you see the network
  | scheme you can understand better:
  | https://giuliomagnifico.blog/_images/2023/home-network_v4/Re...
 
  | syntaxing wrote:
  | Wait, does this work with HomePod minis? My current mDNS works
  | with my network, my issue is the HomePod mini automatically
  | jumps back to the same wifi as my phone.
 
    | giuliomagnifico wrote:
    | Yes absolutely, but your iPhone and the HomePod should be on
    | the same/main vlan, not the HomePod on the IoT vlan.
 
  | gertrunde wrote:
  | Going from the earlier instalments (v1/2/3) - I suspect it's
  | the ISP modem.
  | 
  | (And I'm guessing the metal cones are there to lift it off the
  | flat surface for more airflow).
 
    | giuliomagnifico wrote:
    | Exactly, the metal cones are 3 unused audiophile spikes.
    | Perfect fit inside the holes of the bottom of the modem.
 
    | blitzar wrote:
    | V1/2/3 are pretty handy for figuring out the other stuff too.
 
  | blitzar wrote:
  | ISP Modem?
 
| blep_ wrote:
| I've been waiting for a good time to ask this oddly specific
| question: why does everyone number VLANs 10, 20, 30, etc. instead
| of 1, 2, 3?
 
  | briHass wrote:
  | On some devices (e.g. CISCO), ID 1 is reserved, so starting at
  | powers of 10 keeps it nice and even and allows for insertions
  | (same logic as line-numbering in BASIC.) I assume 10 seems
  | better than 100 (or even 1000); those just seem crazy high.
 
  | icelancer wrote:
  | At least in our case, this allows this space:
  | 
  | 172.16.0.1 to 172.16.9.255
  | 
  | To be available for non-VLAN DHCP, static leases, and internal
  | devices. Not sure if that's why others do it this way, but it
  | made sense for us.
 
  | blowski wrote:
  | Originally, so you could group related VLANs together. e.g.
  | VLAN30 is Marketing, then later you need a second marketing
  | team so they have VLAN31. If you'd had VLAN1, 2, 3, etc, you
  | couldn't do this.
  | 
  | That everyone does it - even on small home networks - is just
  | convention.
 
  | viraptor wrote:
  | Same reason as assigning larger networks than you need or
  | leaving free spaces between them. You may want to put some
  | things close to each other because they logically go together.
  | But some things that go together don't exist yet, so let's
  | reserve the space.
  | 
  | (Can't speak for everyone of course, but that's why I'd use
  | 10.0.10.0/24, then 10.0.20.0/24, etc. Now "same kind of thing
  | next to it" can have 10.0.11.0/24)
 
  | giuliomagnifico wrote:
  | Because VLAN 1 is the default used by lots of vendors, and
  | sometimes also 2, so using 10 and 20 is easy to remember that
  | is a VLAN and you can leave some static IP free also. Also
  | because is not like DHCP addresses that are 1-255 but VLANs are
  | 1-4096 so you can use some easy numbers to remember. For
  | example I'm using VLAN 50 for IoT because the Homebridge server
  | has 192.168.1.5 IP, so IoT is VLAN 50 with 192.168.50.0/24.
  | 
  | Some can argue that using VLAN 1 is also a bit less safe
  | because it's the default VLAN and attackers usually scan for it
  | like 192.168.1.1 IP for modem/WAN.
 
| kccqzy wrote:
| I'll just say one thing regarding my own home network setup: go
| IPv6 only. Ditch IPv4, except for the necessary evil that is
| NAT64/DNS64. I refuse to network any device that does not support
| IPv6, and I refuse to use any app that chooses not to use the
| IPv6 addresses present.
 
  | manv1 wrote:
  | Yes, because I want my internal home devices publicly
  | accessible by default.
  | 
  | Seriously, the global addressability of ipv6 is something that
  | people used to using ipv4/NAT tend to forget. I know a bunch of
  | people (well, two) that make a living scanning for IPv6
  | addresses inside networks that the admins didn't realize were
  | open to the world.
 
  | npteljes wrote:
  | Why do you do this? Principle, or does it have an actual
  | advantage?
 
    | kccqzy wrote:
    | Mostly principle. The internet is designed for end-to-end
    | connectivity; let's strive for a more decentralized internet
    | by giving big cloud and residential users equal access by
    | removing NAT.
    | 
    | As for actual advantage, I can think of reduced configuration
    | burden since you don't have to maintain two sets of firewall
    | configs for dual-stack hosts. It's a small advantage only.
    | 
    | On the other hand, I'll be honest with you, there are
    | disadvantages. As recently as 2021, people are still
    | discovering problems on IPv6-only networks that necessitate
    | writing new RFCs to mandate new behavior. Yes I'm talking
    | about https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9131.html It's
    | because of the low prevalence of IPv6-only networks that
    | changes as fundamental as Neighbor Discovery have to be
    | proposed in this decade.
 
      | npteljes wrote:
      | I think that's a nice framing for the issue! IPv6 adoption
      | is really slow, considering that I've been hearing about
      | the necessity for what seems like two decades now.
 
| ralphael wrote:
| Anyone who uses Grafana to monitor their home setup, thats +1
| from me.
| 
| Appreciate the commitment and dedication to detail.
 
  | bombcar wrote:
  | You'll love https://mods.factorio.com/mod/graftorio2
 
| thrwawy74 wrote:
| 2 things come to mind here:
| 
| 1) I don't trust devices to respect VLANs. I trust the switches
| to respect VLANs, but not devices. When the VLAN-tagged traffic
| hits WiFi the VLAN is lost. When it's received at the AP the AP
| can choose to tag it again before entering the switch. I think
| I'd still do multiple SSID's + VLAN's so wifi clients intended
| for different VLANs are not communicating on the same "virtual
| AP"? I worry my Google IOT devices could be in promiscuous mode
| looking at everything. Multiple SSID's would separate them from
| other devices by encryption.
| 
| 2) I've read a couple articles saying rate-limiting IOT and Guest
| networks results in more service interruption than one would
| expect. Simply prioritizing the main network traffic over Guest &
| IOT is a better setup. How do we do this in OpenWRT?
 
  | giuliomagnifico wrote:
  | 1) is safe to trust VLANs, especially for this home stuff...
  | otherwise you will need separated LANs and cables! Overkilled.
  | 
  | 2) I'm not rate limiting the IoT devices, I'm monitoring them
  | and they make really few traffic, you can limit a device by MAC
  | address in OpenWrt anyway:
  | https://forum.openwrt.org/t/bandwidth-limit-per-ip-mac/35943
 
  | justsomehnguy wrote:
  | > 1)
  | 
  | This is not Area 51 and a client which doesn't respect VLAN
  | tagging should somehow send packets to a different gateway IP.
  | I don't see a way for a device to know where to send packets if
  | it did break out from VLAN
 
  | candiddevmike wrote:
  | RE: 1, you can push wifi clients to separate VLANs either by
  | host or per SSID depending on the gear. It's enforced on the
  | AP, clients can't breakout.
 
| gbrindisi wrote:
| Loved this! I have just now started rebuilding the home network,
| this is great inspiration
 
| twawaaay wrote:
| I don't have pictures but I can describe it.
| 
| * Broadband 600/60Mb/s with seamless failover to 5G (varying
| speeds)
| 
| * Netgate 6100 router with VPN client, VPN server, site to site
| VPN configured, traffic shaping to reduce bufferbloat, uplink
| failover, etc.
| 
| * 4 Cisco SG 250-8 switches sprinkled throughout the flat. One
| acting as my core switch.
| 
| * QNap with 2 4TB drives in mirror for backups
| 
| * A HDD USB station with a stack of 4TB HDDs for backups. Backups
| are delivered to qnap at various times and then from time to time
| I make a complete copy to a drive which is put in a rotation. I
| keep three full copies of the data at any time and at least one
| of them is off-site with my family. When I visit my family I take
| the latest backup and replace the drive that is in their custody.
| 
| * a small, passively cooled server with 2TB fast SSD, 128GB ECC
| RAM, Ryzen 5 CPU, Asrock PRO X570D4U-2L2T. Hosts proxmox where I
| keep about a dozen VMs for various things, Ubiquiti management
| panel, NVR, dns filter, development tools, minecraft servers,
| jump box, etc....
| 
| * a 10 year old Thinkpad T440s running always on serving as my
| emergency server and a development environment.
| 
| * 4 Ubiquiti WiFi 6 access points -- before you jump in saying
| this is overkill, I live in a large flat in a dense urban area
| with about half a thousand 2.4GHz APs and 50 5GHz ones
| interfering with my WiFi setup. Most people and even network
| providers are clueless and set up their devices to max power as
| if it was going to help them -- it only makes things worse. I
| have 4 APs with reduced power so that anywhere you are at my flat
| you are always close to one of APs and you roam between them
| seamlessly as you move.
| 
| * Multiple VLANS and WiFi networks
| 
| * a VLAN + WLAN for my family for their regular devices to access
| the Internet and some defined services within network but
| otherwise disallowed to contact anything else
| 
| * a VLAN + WLAN for IOT, legacy devices, devices I don't trust or
| devices that only support old protocols and would deteriorate
| WLAN performance (printers, a chinese projector, etc.) This VLAN
| does not have Internet access (so that devices can't phone home),
| don't have access to any other device in the network, don't have
| access to other networks and can only be reached with defined
| firewall rules.
| 
| * a VLAN + WLAN for my work -- this is dedicated for my work
| laptop, my phone, my electronics lab (oscilloscope, multimeter,
| programmable PSU/load, etc.)
| 
| * a VLAN + WLAN for guests
| 
| * a management VLAN -- any network devices, servers, QNAP etc.
| are only available through this separated VLAN which has very
| strict access through a jump box. Also does not have direct
| internet access so the devices can't phone somewhere else (but I
| have a proxy for software updates, etc.)
| 
| * a service VLAN -- where my services are available internally
| (for example QNAP interface, apps running in VMs, etc.) Some of
| them have rules to be accessed from other networks
| 
| * a DMZ VLAN -- I expose some services to the world, DMZ serves
| to provide one more hurdle for any attacker
 
  | digitallyfree wrote:
  | As a homelabber myself (enterprise networking + servers) there
  | are quite a few things to consider before jumping ahead with
  | such a setup. It can be rewarding but you'll need to commit to
  | it and be prepared to troubleshoot - you're basically a small
  | business IT shop at this point. Having some network/IT
  | background is obviously helpful.
  | 
  | Keep in mind that the power consumption of all the equipment is
  | quite substantial and must be taken into account before
  | starting. Also as your setup becomes more complex backups,
  | redundancy, and security must all be considered - it's easy to
  | run your network dead in the water if you aren't prepared for
  | it, and unlike a single home router you can't just simply
  | reboot and reset if everything relies on the network. For
  | instance assume that all your machines rely on your NFS server
  | to access files - if that server goes down, how quickly can you
  | replace it? If the RADIUS server goes down and your devices
  | can't authenticate across your switches and APs, do you have a
  | fallback method of access?
  | 
  | Finally unless your family knows how to maintain the system as
  | well, you'll be the sole IT contact and will have to do quite a
  | bit of support especially at the start. You'll need a plan of
  | how to remotely manage everything if you're say on vacation
  | since things like to crop up then.
 
    | twawaaay wrote:
    | > As a homelabber myself (enterprise networking + servers)
    | there are quite a few things to consider before jumping ahead
    | with such a setup
    | 
    | Well. I have over quarter of century of experience in IT, as
    | a sysadmin, developer, electronics engineer and tech lead. It
    | helps. I would never suggest anybody to do this just to have
    | a nice WiFi at home...
    | 
    | > Finally unless your family knows how to maintain the system
    | as well, you'll be the sole IT contact and will have to do
    | quite a bit of support especially at the start. You'll need a
    | plan of how to remotely manage everything if you're say on
    | vacation since things like to crop up then.
    | 
    | Yep. I have VPN I can use to manage the network. All devices
    | can be rebooted remotely.
    | 
    | I also have some backups -- the 5G router can be disconnected
    | from the setup and used standalone and I have instructed my
    | wife how to do this. Most of the files are synchronised to a
    | cloud service where she can connect in need.
    | 
    | The passwords to everything are stored in tamper evident
    | envelopes (and a paper books with a log in my own
    | handwriting).
    | 
    | As to power consumption this probably is the weakest point of
    | all of this. Yes, a lot of devices equals a lot of power, but
    | my devices are extra power hungry. Although I tried to avoid
    | unnecessary electricity waste (if only to keep it fanless) I
    | never compromised quality for it. For example, I went out of
    | my way to not buy an actual server even though there is a
    | plenty of used servers that I would be perfectly happy with.
    | Instead I built my own based on one of a kind motherboard
    | that supports a consumer CPU and ECC RAM and uses relatively
    | little power.
 
      | digitallyfree wrote:
      | Hah from reading your original post I already knew you were
      | good. My comment was really meant for those interested in
      | these setups (I get asked about this quite often) without
      | realizing the time and effort needed to maintain it. This
      | can be a real rabbit hole as I started with an Edgerouter
      | and Unifi AP and eventually worked my way up.
      | 
      | I really like your idea of having a separate router that
      | can be used standalone if the main system fails, and might
      | actually consider adopting that for my family as it would
      | be very useful if I'm not available. Currently I'm looking
      | into a virtual HA Opnsense setup on two servers to maintain
      | routing if one fails and cannot restart for whatever
      | reason.
 
        | twawaaay wrote:
        | We take this router with us on trips. It is nice to have
        | your own fast, mobile Internet with you (no transfer or
        | bandwidth limits). And when it does not serve as backup
        | Internet it has site-to-site VPN to our home network.
 
  | mtlynch wrote:
  | Thanks for sharing this!
  | 
  | I'm a networking amateur, and one thing I've struggled to
  | figure out is VLANs for wireless devices. It seems like VLANs
  | are managed at switch level, so does that mean that all devices
  | on a particular AP have to share the same VLAN? Or is there a
  | way to segregate devices across multiple VLANs within a single
  | AP?
 
    | formerly_proven wrote:
    | Enterprise APs support VLAN tagging themselves, so you assign
    | multiple VLANs to the AP uplink in the switch and then tell
    | the AP which SSID belongs to which VLAN.
 
      | twawaaay wrote:
      | Yes. I set up VLANs on my Cisco switches. The APs are told
      | what vlans and WLANS are configured through Ubiquiti
      | management panel. The APs are all connected to their
      | assigned ports on the switches and the ports are configured
      | to see all necessary VLANS tagged and one (management) VLAN
      | untagged. The untagged VLAN is how the management
      | application talks to APs.
      | 
      | Eeach of 4 APs serves all 4 WLANs and each WLAN + VLAN are
      | completely separated networks.
      | 
      | The traffic from various WLANS goes directly to their
      | assigned VLANS and never mixes together -- the only way is
      | either through the router or some other service like my
      | proxy.
 
        | mtlynch wrote:
        | Gotcha, thanks for the extra details!
 
      | lotsofpulp wrote:
      | Is Aruba Instant On considered an enterprise AP? It is the
      | cheapest and easiest way to do home networking with VLAN
      | that I have found.
 
    | giuliomagnifico wrote:
    | If you read my post is what I've done: separated VLANs (3)
    | with a single AP and cable from the router.
 
  | giuliomagnifico wrote:
  | >I don't have pictures but I can describe it.
  | 
  | That's very interesting, but how much power does the whole
  | thing consume?
  | 
  | In my case all this setup is 45-50W, I thinks is a good goal.
 
    | twawaaay wrote:
    | I don't know how much all of this consumes. The networking
    | itself is pretty power hungry, just the APs probably consume
    | more.
    | 
    | On the other hand there are no fans in my setup except,
    | incredibly, the laptop. But this fan is kicking in extremely
    | rarely and only when I am actually using it, so no problem.
    | 
    | The backup NAS makes a bit of noise but this is happening
    | during night when nobody cares.
 
  | oaiey wrote:
  | I recommend anyone separate VLAN for your work at home
  | environment. The company might spy but far more importantly,
  | the risk of viral infections and hacks is so dramatically
  | higher in a company than you alone at home with your family.
 
    | twawaaay wrote:
    | Yep, that's what I have.
    | 
    | One large bank I worked for was very surprised and
    | practically enraged when they figured out I work on a VM and
    | they don't _actually_ control the device I am sitting on. It
    | all started because they decided I am obliged to  "provide
    | for basic security" and install an antivirus. I told them
    | there is absolutely no need for me to install an antivirus on
    | this machine. This machine has only ever been used to connect
    | to their network and I have neither installed anything or
    | even visited any website from it. Moreover, it is snapshotted
    | and restored from a snapshot every single day. It is fun to
    | sometimes battle those mindless corporate drones.
 
  | ryandrake wrote:
  | I like this setup. Mine is much simpler, but I dig your vibe
  | with the VLANs. I don't have any Internet failover or VPN, and
  | have settled on:
  | 
  | - Regular VLAN: Access to LAN and Internet (I insist on having
  | root on the device for it to go here)
  | 
  | - Guest VLAN: Access to Internet only
  | 
  | - Quarantine/IoT VLAN: Access to LAN only
  | 
  | I don't feel I need any more granularity than that. Of course
  | the primary LAN backbone is 1Gig ethernet, but I have APs every
  | 50 feet or so for phones.
 
    | twawaaay wrote:
    | I thought about 10Gig but then I decided almost no device I
    | own can actually make use of it and even if it could, there
    | are better ways to do it. I don't need to have 10Gig just to
    | be able to edit videos/photos if I can easily solve the
    | problem and copy them locally for the duration. Also almost
    | everything uses WiFi and there are only two computers (my
    | macbook pro and gaming PC) that are connected to ethernet.
    | 
    | As to APs, having multiple APs (well configured) and a good
    | router (well configured) has much bigger impact on the
    | quality of user experience than the actual throughput of the
    | broadband itself.
 
| renox wrote:
| I wonder why noone is talking about the 'bufferbloat' issue, is-
| it a solved issue now? Can I pick any router to plug into my ISP
| router?
 
| KaiserPro wrote:
| My setup is pretty similar in schematic, but not finess of
| design.
| 
| I have a 24 port netgear fanless smart switch as the backbone. I
| did have a POE version but the fans were too loud. I have a PoE
| injector now which allows me to power the APs and the phones for
| the house intercom.
| 
| I use pfsense for routing and firewall.
| 
| Ubuquity for APs. I have four, one for upstairs, one for down,
| one in the garden and one in the shed. three are second hand.
| 
| I have a VLAN for work, (I can ssh in from the normal vlans, but
| I can't get out from the work VLAN)
| 
| A have a VLAN for CCTV, normal use, servers/services, and one for
| IoT. Seems to work ok for my needs, but most people don't need
| what I want on a network.
 
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| I'd highly recommend a Ubiquity Dream Machine Pro if you have any
| advanced use cases. I've got mine VPN bridged to my office router
| and it's been convenient to be able to force some devices at home
| to have all traffic routed over that link.
| 
| PlayStation dev kits annoyingly require usage on a whitelisted
| static IP to activate (every 2 days) and access dev PSN
| environments. It would have been a huge PITA doing it any other
| way.
 
| xattt wrote:
| Are there any server rack mounted patch panels that let you
| choose to use a certain network drop for POTS or for Ethernet?
| 
| I've seen similar patch panels for structured wiring, but not for
| server racks.
 
  | giuliomagnifico wrote:
  | With the 19" front rack mount I have never seen one.
 
  | zrail wrote:
  | Get a 19" keystone panel and then you can do whatever you want.
  | There are keystones available for Ethernet, coax, rj11 POTS,
  | hdmi, fiber, basically anything.
 
| cabirum wrote:
| My _unnecessarily convoluted_ home setup _that takes too much
| space_ - ftfy.
 
  | rbranson wrote:
  | Everything has a purpose, unlike many "home labs" where people
  | are just tinkering. There's nothing in here that would require
  | fussy maintenance. It seems pretty reasonable to me given the
  | functionality.
 
    | caust1c wrote:
    | If they think this network is convoluted they should see
    | mine!
 
    | dgroshev wrote:
    | In my experience, the main issue with setups like that is
    | IoT/convenience devices being subtly broken because of all
    | the firewalling. Then you suddenly find yourself trying to
    | figure out why you can't just airprint from your ipad or why
    | your guest's iphone sees a HomePod, tries to activate
    | airplay, but it just silently fails. Really fun to debug,
    | especially when you need that document printed right now or
    | when you have a party going.
 
      | neoromantique wrote:
      | But what's the alternative? Unsafe home network where one
      | rogue device can act as a tunnel for bad actors(bots more
      | often tbh)?
 
        | Tijdreiziger wrote:
        | If you buy devices from trustworthy brands and replace
        | them when they stop getting security updates, it should
        | be fine, right? After all, aren't 99% of home networks
        | 'unsafe' according to your definition?
 
        | neoromantique wrote:
        | >After all, aren't 99% of home networks 'unsafe'
        | according to your definition?
        | 
        | Prevailance of home ip addresses in DDoS attacks and in
        | proxy pools does suggest so -\\_(tsu)_/-
 
        | dgroshev wrote:
        | It doesn't follow. There are a lot of homes, so even if
        | 1% of all home networks had "rogue" devices in them
        | they'd dominate DDoS attacks. Besides, it's not HomePods
        | or Withings smart scales or Hue bridges doing that as far
        | as I'm aware, it's mostly cheap, unsupported, noname
        | crap, so you can reduce your risks substantially by not
        | buying questionable products.
 
        | neoromantique wrote:
        | There are plenty of CVEs in brand name things across IoT
        | spectrum.
        | 
        | Vetting devices you introduce to network is of course
        | solid advice, but a little bit of paranoia never hurts in
        | tech.
 
        | dgroshev wrote:
        | How many of those get exploited on firewalled networks
        | before they're remotely patched though?
        | 
        | My whole point above that it does actively hurt, with
        | devices randomly misbehaving at exactly wrong times. It's
        | not enough to set up everything once because devices get
        | updated and change ports, domains, and protocols. It also
        | makes everything more brittle, requiring multiple inter-
        | VLAN proxies to be running at all times for seemingly
        | unrelated devices to work. That SD card in your raspi
        | died? You decided to update Docker on it and run into
        | problems? No Sonos for anyone in the house until it's
        | fixed.
        | 
        | There's a real cost to that paranoia, it's just another
        | case of security/convenience tradeoff.
 
        | neoromantique wrote:
        | Let's agree to disagree, I think in the end it comes down
        | to priorities and pain threshold for having to tinker
        | with stuff.
 
        | dgroshev wrote:
        | The alternative is roughly what google called BeyondCorp
        | -- not trusting your network and doing explicit auth
        | everywhere it matters, maybe with a sprinkle of Tailscale
        | to simplify auth and encryption.
        | 
        | If you're worried about your network being saturated for
        | DDoS by a random IoT device, I suspect you'll notice it
        | even without explicit monitoring.
        | 
        | Besides, risks need to be weighed by their probabilities.
        | It's a small chance of name-brand IoT devices "going
        | rogue" vs the certainty of random things not working when
        | they should, and I don't think this tradeoff leans
        | towards VLANs for most people.
 
  | rejectfinite wrote:
  | Sure, you can use the ISP modem and a laptop on wifi.
  | 
  | But that sucks ass.
  | 
  | Wouldn't you rather have real monitors/screens, a solid wired
  | connection to a network and a real keyboard and mouse? Yea it
  | takes space and time but its way better.
 
    | NegativeK wrote:
    | > Wouldn't you rather have real monitors/screens, a solid
    | wired connection to a network and a real keyboard and mouse?
    | Yea it takes space and time but its way better.
    | 
    | I do for most things, but better is personal.
    | 
    | Saying that OP's setup is overly convoluted or better is
    | entirely missing the point -- it's what they want to do for
    | enjoyment. Personal taste doesn't need to be justified.
 
  | bluedino wrote:
  | Agreed, but it's neat.
  | 
  | Every time I try setting my home network up like that (smart
  | firewall, traffic graphs, etc), I just end up going back to a
  | $30 router/AP.
 
    | fishtacos wrote:
    | Had a similarly convoluted network for some years... over
    | time you realize it's just pointless to waste time
    | maintaining and troubleshooting said setup.
    | 
    | Today it's ISP router + separate AP (better coverage).
    | Chinese hackers aren't attacking my network, and if they did,
    | cool, have at it. Basic firewall + NAT + AV covers 99% of use
    | cases, even in a business, with the right configuration.
    | Turns out I don't miss pfSense either.
    | 
    | Makes sense for keeping skills up to date, though, and as a
    | hobby, I can see how one can get into it. Reddit's r/homelab
    | has some crazy builds to check out.
 
      | bombcar wrote:
      | I have something relatively similar, a bunch of old
      | datacenter equipment (cheapest way to get 10+ GB!) and some
      | mikrotik, and then I have hardcoded DHCP leases for my IoT
      | shit, and extensive blocking at the firewall for those
      | devices/MAC addresses.
      | 
      | Good enough for me.
 
      | [deleted]
 
      | [deleted]
 
      | dgroshev wrote:
      | I'd sub the ISP router for a PS120 topton box with vyos on
      | it, just because it can handle smart queues at line rate.
      | It's really nice when you have exactly the same low ping
      | and jitter regardless of other load on the network, with
      | bandwidth splitting equally, and ISP routers just can't do
      | that in my experience. It just works and requires zero
      | fiddling.
 
        | fishtacos wrote:
        | TBH, haven't gone into anything deeper than a ping and
        | jitter benchmarks, so not terribly in depth or long-term
        | besides occasional tests out of curiosity.
        | 
        | ATT fiber 300 up/down provides 4 ms consistent ping to
        | google's closest's datacenter, sometimes at 3 ms, which
        | is of course nuts. Might as well be in my apartment
        | block. Perfectly happy with provided unit, although it's
        | an older one.
        | 
        | Tangential, but have used vyOS some years ago to create a
        | makeshift 10G switch using commodity hardware and an old
        | PC. Routed and switched amazingly fast - the demise was
        | related to what I could guess were broadcast storms.
        | 
        | I'm with you in spirit however. Want and will probably
        | need to switch back to a more customizable router.
 
      | bityard wrote:
      | I essentially have a foot in both camps... I like having
      | the control and autonomy of open-source networking hardware
      | but I don't have enough spare time to make it a full-on
      | hobby. Right now my "happy spot" is:
      | 
      | 1. An OPNSense firewall between my cable modem and the rest
      | of the network running on a low-power PC Engines APU2. The
      | web-based UI is funky but workable, full SSH access to the
      | box for digging into the internals when needed, online
      | upgrades are a cinch.
      | 
      | 2. An 8-port gigabit unmanaged switch that everything hangs
      | off of.
      | 
      | 3. A Netgear WAX218 business-grade access point for wifi,
      | running the stock firmware. Web UI is decent and doesn't
      | require any cloud-based management bullshit. For around
      | $100, it works much better than it has any right to, given
      | the prices of mid-range APs and wifi routers these days.
      | 
      | 4. A small fleet of Raspberry Pis for miscellaneous tasks.
      | 
      | If I get more into IoT, it shouldn't be much of a hassle to
      | add VLANs and maybe another switch.
 
        | jon-wood wrote:
        | Unless you're really into managing a small fleet of
        | devices for basic functionality I'd highly recommend
        | replacing them with a single Intel NUC or similar. I did
        | the same after one too many SD card failures and was very
        | happy with the results - you get a significantly more
        | powerful server for a power footprint about the same as
        | all the horribly inefficient USB power adapters running a
        | bunch of Pis.
 
        | fishtacos wrote:
        | That sounds like a good "happy spot" and doesn't veer in
        | hobby territory IMO. More like an interest.
        | 
        | In retrospect, I lied a bit about not missing pfSense (or
        | OPNSense in your case) because truthfully I miss the
        | monitoring, packages, configuration and expandability
        | options. At the same time, I also don't miss them,
        | because 0 headaches and actually better latency is still
        | a plus. Just need to login to that god awful ATT
        | interface to open up a port, but these are 1st world
        | problems... there's always VPNs and cloud VPS to fix
        | that.
 
  | Tepix wrote:
  | Are Fritz!Boxes available in the US? They're built by AVM (a
  | german brand) and are pretty neat if you want something that's
  | secure, supported for a long time and easy to configure. Add
  | some of their wireless repeaters for coverage via mesh
  | networking and you'll have a guest wifi available everywhere
  | and all is well.
 
    | danieldk wrote:
    | Same, I have used Fritz!Boxes for years, they are reliable,
    | get updates and are quite configurable. The labs version even
    | has Wireguard support now (they had IPsec before).
 
    | blibble wrote:
    | I had one of these boxes and found it to be beyond
    | infuriating
    | 
    | I would set up something simple like port-forwarding to a
    | static IP and test that it worked
    | 
    | then I'd come back a few days later to use it and found the
    | router had helpfully changed the IP to another one
    | 
    | and this happened with several different features (IPv6,
    | DHCP, etc)
    | 
    | I replaced it with a much cheaper Mikrotik box and that's
    | worked flawlessly ever since
    | 
    | I would not recommend the Fritzbox to my worst enemy
 
      | danieldk wrote:
      | If you select a host in the network overview, there is an
      | option _Always assign this network device the same IPv4
      | address_. If you tick that the address never changes. Also
      | in modern Fritz!Boxes port forwarding is associated with a
      | particular host, so I think it also works without the
      | static assignment enabled?
      | 
      | Anyway, I have logged on to my headless GPU machines
      | remotely through port forwarding for years and never had an
      | issue.
 
      | nerdile wrote:
      | In the US when a device is "on the fritz" it is failing
      | intermittently, and the classical solution is to smack it
      | firmly until it works. I suppose a Fritzbox might be
      | perpetually on the fritz.
 
  | petesergeant wrote:
  | My home cactus garden has an _unnecessary number_ of cacti in
  | it, as compared to the average home. I also expend _unnecessary
  | calories_ when hiking to places _I don 't need to go_.
  | 
  | (edit: admittedly the five or six times I've setup a home
  | network more complicated than just connecting to a router I've
  | ended up regretting it after a few months)
 
    | tinus_hn wrote:
    | Sometimes I even just walk in a big circle and end up where I
    | started! What a waste of time!
    | 
    | Building my home network though is teaching me IPv6.
 
  | atomt wrote:
  | Direct hit to the heart *cries in BGP and big enterprise
  | switches*
 
  | bavent wrote:
  | Do you not have any hobbies? I find this to maybe not be
  | practical, but that's not the point of it.
 
| rejectfinite wrote:
| One thing to takeaway is that wired is so much better than wifi.
| 
| At home I am just using the ISP router but I have my work
| laptop,desktop, consoles and TV wired with ethernet and it is
| amazing compared to wifi. No more dropouts, random ping
| spikes/lag etc.
| 
| Just ISP router with 4 gigabit ports + one Netgear GS108 dumb
| gigabit switch.
 
| shanebellone wrote:
| I love that you modified a piece of furniture. I plan to do
| something similar with a rolltop desk.
 
| pantalaimon wrote:
| No IPv6?
 
| zeagle wrote:
| I always enjoy reading about these but man that is a lot of work
| to set up even if maintenance is simple. Ubiquiti has lost trust
| but to their credit even a simple UDM base (that is not connected
| to the cloud) can do VLANs with another device running
| pihole/wireguard works great. You even could run the pihole on
| device with podman and use their baked in VPN.
 
  | rrosen326 wrote:
  | I'd like to plug Ubiquiti also. I'm not a networking guy and I
  | just want my network to work. I don't want to worry about it or
  | try to guess am I having problems due to Comcast or my home
  | network setup.
  | 
  | Switching to Ubiquiti, from high-end Asus gear, has been
  | awesome. Everything just works. Networking is now a non-issue,
  | and when my wife tells me the "internet isn't working", I can
  | respond, "it's not my fault!"
  | 
  | That's worth the cost to me.
 
    | neoromantique wrote:
    | +1
    | 
    | I heard some horror stories with new ubiquiti gear, but my
    | ERPoE router has been serving me gbit and PoE for AP since
    | 2016 and 0 issues, it even handles WireGuard using some
    | hoops.
 
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Not the way I went on my home network, but still a good write-up.
| Always like reading and seeing how people solve problems that go
| beyond "I bought a 42U rack and installed it in my basement."
| 
| I'm going to steal the idea of the Raspberry Pi on the phone
| stand idea, especially when just hacking around with an SBC at my
| desk.
| 
| I would recommend replacing all those USB power adapters with
| just one or two dedicated USB power adapters. Can recommend the
| six-port 60W model by Anker that will happily run all those
| devices you have, and then some.
 
  | giobox wrote:
  | You can add PoE (Power over Ethernet) to the Pi 4 or Pi 3B+
  | pretty cheaply (10-15 dollar hat), and avoid the USB power
  | supply altogether. Not strictly necessary, but makes the wiring
  | so much simpler/cleaner as just one single ethernet cable doing
  | power and data, and you can expand into other neat PoE
  | solutions. My Pi cluster is powered by my ethernet switch
  | alone.
  | 
  | It makes wiring a UPS into the system really easy too - just
  | have backup power on the ethernet switch, the downstream Pis
  | are taken care of. I'd love if the Pi 5 just has PoE out of the
  | box personally, I run all my Pi projects this way now.
 
  | HeYmaney wrote:
  | > I'm going to steal the idea of the Raspberry Pi on the phone
  | stand idea, especially when just hacking around with an SBC at
  | my desk.
  | 
  | Yeah me too! What model of stand is it tho? and how would you
  | keep them attached? Looking at the pictures it seems different
  | from one pi to another.
 
| Aloha wrote:
| This looks really super interesting!
| 
| I'm gonna check out grafana, it looks significantly slicker than
| Cacti.
| 
| I ended up with a significantly more complex home network than I
| ever expected -
| 
| 2 48 Port HPE 1820's 1 24 Port PoE HPE 1820's
| 
| All of these are linked with 2 1 GBE links in Port Channel
| 
| TP-Link Managed Wifi AP's with controller (I wanted roaming
| support, and PoE support)
| 
| Mikrotik HEx Router also linked in Port Channel to one of the
| core switches (I'd like to get multiple bonds set up, thats the
| intent, but I've had trouble making it play nice with rSTP - I
| think its an issue with my MikroTik Config, but its so poorly
| documented, its hard to say)
| 
| For places where I have lots of port needs where I was unable to
| pull a ton of cable -
| 
| 3 24 Port HPE 1810's (2 of these connect back to the Core
| Switches with port-channels) 1 8 Port HPE 1810 (PoE powered)
| 
| The 1810/1820's are great, because they do not have cloud
| management, are fanless (PoE notwithstanding), and are easy to
| configure (no weird specific CLI to learn/no poorly implemented
| copy of Cisco IOS UI) via a web interface. Their lack of 10g
| support is annoying, but also worth the price savings.
| 
| From a VLAN perspective, I have six - one for my external
| netblock (which is just a pass thru from the cable gateway), and
| another for my internal LAN, plus two additional VLAN's for my
| home work lab, and another two for 'utility' which is to say, I
| built them in, but have not found a use for them yet ;-)
| 
| There is also a cacti server in a VM, I need to rebuilt it
| eventually so I have better instrumentation.
 
| jaclaz wrote:
| >Wiring
| 
| A word of warning, it must be said that you shouldn't have a
| "normal" data cable in the same conduit as mains.
| 
| With CAT 6 cable you won't have transmission/interference
| problems, but still it is not allowed by code, unless the network
| cable is of the type insulated up to 400V, marked with "CEI-UNEL
| 36762 C-4 (U0=400V)", see (italian):
| 
| https://fibra.click/cavi/#coesistenza-con-cavi-in-tensione
| 
| https://www.cavel.it/it/supporto-tecnico/certificazioni/coes...
 
  | wkat4242 wrote:
  | If Italy is anything like Spain nobody gives a crap about
  | building code stuff.
  | 
  | When I moved into my apartment it had just been "certified" by
  | an electrician which took a week. There were outlets without
  | covers on them. Exposed live stripped wires hanging in the
  | hallway. Ground wire to the breaker box but not actually
  | connected to the rest of the house. Exposed terminal blocks
  | hanging everywhere. I doubt this "professional" even bothered
  | to visit the place and just cashed a royal fee to sign the
  | paperwork.
  | 
  | It's a total joke. If this crap gets "certified" then a DC
  | cable beside an AC one In a conduit is really no issue :)
 
    | eldaisfish wrote:
    | Please don't call certification a joke and diminish its
    | value.
    | 
    | If you see clearly illegal things, report them. The person
    | doing the certification can have their license revoked.
    | 
    | Things aren't always ideal but please don't turn this into a
    | laughing matter.
 
      | [deleted]
 
      | fuzzybear3965 wrote:
      | Maybe he did report them and maybe their license wasn't
      | revoked. He's only repeating a joke that the electrician
      | and the certification committee told him. I wouldn't blame
      | the victim, here.
 
  | giuliomagnifico wrote:
  | Yes, I know and you're right but it's only a short path (about
  | 2 meters), and it's the only way I found to get through the
  | cable from a room to another. Anyway I haven't terminated the
  | cable with the wall jack, the cable is going out of the wall
  | "intact", this should be a bit safer.
 
    | kjs3 wrote:
    | You might want to check if that out of code solution could
    | invalidate your homeowners insurance policy. It sure can in
    | the US.
 
      | bombcar wrote:
      | Especially now that it's publicly available on the
      | internet. And yes, the fire investigators for home
      | insurance DO check things like that.
 
    | NegativeLatency wrote:
    | Sounds like a good excuse to run a bit of fiber
 
    | jaclaz wrote:
    | Sure, and as said you won't likely have any issue, and maybe
    | - without knowing - you actually used a U0=400V cable, the
    | norm is 2010 or so if I recall correctly, so I believe that
    | most Cat 6 cables in commerce are nowadays certified for that
    | use.
 
      | giuliomagnifico wrote:
      | Just checked, and I see only EIA/TIA 568B.2 ISO/IEC 11801
      | EN501
 
  | sschueller wrote:
  | You can with fiber and it is allowed. I used these special
  | plates[1] in my setup[2] that are meant to be run in the same
  | conduit as power. Switzerland is quite strict with electrical
  | codes so I was surprised when I found out I could do this.
  | 
  | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARSpp4B9-X4
  | 
  | [2] https://sschueller.github.io/posts/wiring-a-home-with-
  | fiber/
 
    | sn0wf1re wrote:
    | Glass and plastic don't conduct electricity.
 
  | tucosan wrote:
  | Can you please elaborate? Sadly your linked document is in
  | Italian, which poses a language barrier for most of the
  | community here.
 
    | jaclaz wrote:
    | Until that norm (as said I believe around 2010 or so) you
    | could NOT mix low voltage (and signal) cables with mains
    | (220V-240V AC usually) within a same conduit.
    | 
    | The new norm allows this mixing as long as the low voltage
    | cables are certified as having insulation for 400 V.
    | 
    | Still you cannot strip the cable (i.e. you cannot put a
    | terminator/receptacle) in the same box as mains.
    | 
    | The code is mainly about electrical safety, it doesn't
    | consider the possibility of interference, that is "your"
    | problem (but shielded cables give no problems in practice).
 
    | bombcar wrote:
    | Two problems - mains lines could come in contact with the
    | data lines which would then transmit power to things
    | connected to them (or burn up). Fiber won't do this because
    | it doesn't transmit.
    | 
    | And the second is that mains lines are AC and could introduce
    | noise into the wired lines - again, fiber isn't susceptible
    | to this.
 
    | cptskippy wrote:
    | The National Electric Code in the US has similar provisions:
    | 
    | > 300.3
    | 
    | > (C) Conductors of Different Systems.
    | 
    | > (1) 600 Volts, Nominal, or Less. Conductors of ac and dc
    | 
    | > circuits, rated 600 volts, nominal, or less, shall be
    | permitted
    | 
    | > to occupy the same equipment wiring enclosure, cable, or
    | 
    | > raceway. All conductors shall have an insulation rating
    | 
    | > equal to at least the maximum circuit voltage applied to
    | any
    | 
    | > conductor within the enclosure, cable, or raceway.
    | 
    | Basically idea is to prevent a low/less voltage cable from
    | potentially being energized by a higher voltage cable. It
    | would suck to strip the ends off your CAT6 and discover it's
    | been energized to 240v.
 
| m463 wrote:
| My home network has a few differences that might be interesting:
| 
| I run openwrt on some mikrotik switches. I started with a
| mikrotik rb750 switch, then switched to rb2011 switches (5x
| 10/100/1000 + 5x 10/100 ports), and now two rb3011uias-rm 10-port
| gbit switches.
| 
| the openwrt rb3011 build comes from
| https://github.com/adron-s/openwrt-rb3011
| 
| I also run openwrt on a turris omnia and a linksys wrt1900acs.
| 
| I use raspberry pis for a few things, notably standalone ntp time
| via a few cheap usb gps dongles. One pi does time exclusively and
| runs openwrt with a gps hat with pps + a pi ups hat. I like the
| flirc pi cases - they are cheap, beefy and have great thermals.
 
  | imiric wrote:
  | Why do you prefer OpenWrt over RouterOS on the Mikrotik
  | switches?
  | 
  | I recently upgraded to a CRS326-24S+2Q+RM, and the experience
  | with RouterOS feels much better compared to OpenWrt. Winbox is
  | super polished, everything is well laid out, and it makes even
  | advanced configuration very easy.
  | 
  | I do run OpenWrt on a few APs, and it works fine for that
  | simple use case, but for anything more advanced, I prefer
  | RouterOS. Sure, it's not open source, and not as extensible to
  | allow you to run a bunch of services on it, but those can run
  | on any other server just as well.
 
    | simplyaccont wrote:
    | last time i checked, CRS3xx not really supported by openwrt.
 
      | imiric wrote:
      | My point is that the experience of RouterOS is much better
      | than OpenWrt, so I'm curious why someone would choose to
      | run OpenWrt on Mikrotik switches.
 
| balls187 wrote:
| What I find interesting and impressive
| 
| 1) your photography
| 
| 2) your HN account is ~3 years old, with 33k karma.
 
  | giuliomagnifico wrote:
  | Ahah thanks...but I spent lots of time in writing this article
  | =)
 
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| The link for a grafana chart full image doesn't work:
| 
| https://giuliomagnifico.blog/_images/2023/home-network_v4/Sc...
| vs https://giuliomagnifico.blog/_images/2023/home-
| network_v4/Sc...
 
  | giuliomagnifico wrote:
  | Fixed, thanks!
 
| ezfe wrote:
| Why is the 100 Mbps port an issue on a device that can never do
| more than a single video stream. Why _should_ the TV manufacturer
| spend more money on that part?
 
  | noahtallen wrote:
  | For one, it's dirt cheap to add what's basically standard
  | everywhere else. These can be expensive consumer devices and I
  | don't like seeing sacrifices when it's completely unnecessary
  | to sacrifice speed here. WiFi is also faster, so TVs can handle
  | the speed.
 
  | giuliomagnifico wrote:
  | First because a TV can last 10 years and have a 1000mbps port
  | will be the minimum.
  | 
  | Second because when you send "something" to the TV like 60mpx
  | photos, using a 100mbps port is slower.
  | 
  | Now a TV is also a home hub, not only a Television. And in the
  | next years the 100mbps will be obsolete very fast.
 
    | bombcar wrote:
    | But if the internal storage of the TV (or the processor)
    | can't handle above 100Mb/s it'll never practically matter.
    | 
    | I've seen more devices that have a GB port and can't do
    | anything useful with it than (I suspect) the other way
    | around.
    | 
    | That said, I've never even checked to see what speed my TV
    | connects at.
 
      | wolrah wrote:
      | > But if the internal storage of the TV (or the processor)
      | can't handle above 100Mb/s it'll never practically matter.
      | 
      | UHD Blu-Rays already exceed 100mbit/sec. That is current
      | commercially distributed consumer content that requires
      | gigabit to stream properly over a network.
      | 
      | Any 4K capable smart TV or streaming device should have a
      | gigabit ethernet interface, no questions asked. 1080p
      | devices, sure, they can get away with 100mbit just fine,
      | but 4K devices have no excuse.
      | 
      | The fact that LG still to this day ships OLED TVs with
      | potentially five digit price tags and 100mbit ethernet
      | ports is a level of cheapness that I can not fathom.
      | 
      | And they handle gigabit just fine, you can plug a USB
      | gigabit adapter in to the TV and it works entirely as
      | expected.
 
  | mkipper wrote:
  | I've never dug deep into this, but the normal argument is that
  | it's possible to saturate a 100Mbps link with a single 4K Blu-
  | ray stream. Even if most people will never hit that limit, it
  | would be nice for a top of the line 4K TV to support "normal"
  | (for some media-savvy folks) 4K streams.
  | 
  | But that's not a very compelling argument on its own, since the
  | Ethernet link is just one link in the chain. Having a gigabit
  | port doesn't help much if the TV can't handle decoding video at
  | those bitrates in real time. It's definitely possible that TV
  | manufacturers choose 100Mbps ports because they know the TV
  | can't deal with huge streams for other reasons.
  | 
  | It's an interesting situation for the manufacturers. Even if
  | 99.9% of buyers will never see streams above 100Mbps, and even
  | if that other 0.1% can't effectively use them, it might be
  | worth it to bump the port to gigabit since complaints about
  | 100Mbps ports come up so often in reviews and in online
  | discussions. Maybe throwing in a borderline useless gigabit
  | port would generate enough sales to justify the marginal BOM
  | cost increase.
 
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