The Network

Originally published by Matthew on May 6, 2006
Last updated on December 20, 2007

I have a decent-sized network setup in my apartment (it used to be bigger before I got married ), and am often asked questions by visitors and members of online forums about how different parts of it work or are setup. I’ll attempt to explain each part as best I can so even a networking novice could put this together if they had to.

Overview

The primary goal of my home network is not just to provide Internet access but also to distribute media and files. You’ll notice that the main file server has a storage capacity of 1.6 TB (1,600 GB). We’re a very media-centric household. I hate conventional media, for the most part. I don’t want to have to go find a DVD to watch one of my favorite TV shows, and unless I’m watching the movie for the digital 5.1 sound effects I’m just as happy streaming it from a video file on the server to my (hacked) Apple TV. Same goes for all my music and software. If anything I have ever existed in physical form — DVD, CD, etc — once it’s on the server the physical media gets stashed away and hopefully I never have to touch it again. I can access anything I want, from anywhere I want, without having to insert any disks. I can even reformat a computer and get all my applications back on it without using any CDs except for the one for the operating system (OS X, Linux).

Here’s a diagram of the entire network. Click on it for the full size.

Current network diagram. View past diagrams.

Now that you understand the purpose behind the network, we can look at each part individually.

Base Star (primary router/DHCP server/primary wireless access point)

Before anyone asks about the names I use for computers and managed devices (like routers), they’re all space or sci-fi based (mostly from Battlestar Galactica). I’m sure that’s no surprise to anyone at this point.

Base Star is a Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G router using WPA authentication for wireless security — that means that for anyone to get on my wireless network, they must enter a password. Base Star is also the DHCP server for the entire network. That means that any device that doesn’t have its IP address set manually (called a static IP) obtains its IP by requesting one from Base Star. You’ll notice on the network diagram that every computer and device has an IP address specified by it, so you might be wondering if they’re all set statically. In fact, none are — they are automatically assigned the same IP address every time by the router via DHCP address reservation. I have specified which computer (through the MAC addresses) gets which IP; that way, it is simple to leave all the machines on DHCP but I can still be sure which IP they’re all getting.

Switches and uplinks

You can see three switches, a Linksys and two Netgears, connected in series below Base Star. Switches are, essentially, smart “splitters.” The two Netgear switches are gigabit (meaning they can burst to 1000 Mbps data transfer speed), and the Linksys switch is the older 100 Mbps standard. The red lines indicate connections that are 1000 Mbps, and the 100 Mbps connections are represented in blue. Having gigabit connections between my workstations and the file server (Galaxy) enables me to transfer large amounts of data very quickly. If you want to know more about how switches work, there’s lots of other good articles out there. Google is your friend.

Galaxy (file server)

Galaxy, the 1,600 GB beast. The best use of old hardware is to turn it into a file server. For a home network, a file server doesn’t need a lot of horsepower. That good old 1.6 GHz AMD Athlon XP I have in there works wonderfully; you would never know it by accessing the files over the network. Linux is, of course, the only option for a real server. These days I have Ubuntu 7.10 server on there, using Samba and AFP to share to the local network and secured SSH and FTP servers so I can access my stuff from the outside world. It also pulls double duty as a web site test bed for me, with Apache/PHP/MySQL installed. Its hard drives consist of: 1×160GB, 3×250GB, 1×300GB, and 1×400GB. The bulk of the space is taken up with TV shows and movies. We also have software, picture albums, a huge computer wallpaper collection, operating system ISO images (OS X, Windows, Linux), music, audio books, video clips (humor, cars, aircraft, commercials), drivers for all the hardware I own, games, and just about anything else you can think of. At the moment, of the 1,600 GB available, roughly 1,300 GB is occupied.

Client devices (TiVo, Xbox, workstations, laptops)

The rest of it is pretty self-explanatory, I think. All these devices connect to Galaxy for accessing media content and to Base Star for access to the Internet. The Apple TV, Xbox 360, and TiVo are all out in the living room connected to the TV (it’s amazing how much of our home theater components are Internet-enabled now), and any of the computers can print to the Epson on my iMac.

Conclusion

I hope I’ve adequately explained my home network without boring anyone with too many details. I avoided discussing most of the mechanics of networking because there’s plenty of other information about that out there; my aim was to explain how I employ it. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post below.

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