The blog & portfolio of Matthew J. Rogers

The Network

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. [Note: the network has shrunk substantially since my college days, but most of the same principles are still in place, if just on a smaller scale.]

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 computer (and file server) has a storage capacity of 2.4 TB (2,400 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 Mac Mini attached to the 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 in its current state. 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 separate Linux file server) no longer exists! All storage was rolled into my main machine (a hackintosh) to save power and management headaches.
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 Galactica for media content and to Base Star for access to the Internet. The Mac Mini, 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 hackintosh.

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.

Updated on October 5, 2008

16 comments

  • Eric May 21st, 2006 at 2:36 am

    Dude, I am seriously envious of that setup you have. I have a fledgling network of my own set up, but it is nowhere near the size and complexity of yours. I recently had a roommate move in to my apartment, and it is easier (and safer) to have a common file server that we can both access. He is running an AMD 1.8 desktop machine, and I have an HP laptop, along with a 120GB Xbox. The server currently has 280 GB of storage space, which is getting pretty full. Gonna need a couple more hard drives real soon. The server is running XP (I know, not really optimimal for a server, but hey, it does the job). Hopefully someday I will have a network server that comes close to what you have. Cheers. :)

  • asdfas June 4th, 2006 at 2:28 pm

    Nice setup

    you need a job, or a girlfriend, or a dog

  • Matthew June 4th, 2006 at 2:29 pm

    I have a job, a fiance, and a cat…how’s that?

  • Ste Peters July 12th, 2006 at 2:54 pm

    cool setup…most impressed!!

    “I can even reformat a computer and get all my applications back on it without using any CD except for the operating system (Windows, Linux) one.”

    why don’t you make individual image files or have a standard i386 folder and stash them on the server then use norton or similar to install them via RIS?
    that way you don’t need to use the cd for installing the OS.

    just a thought seeing as you seem to have nearly all of your bases covered!!

    atb

    Ste.

  • Shaun Rockett October 4th, 2006 at 6:57 am

    Just wondering what kind of back-up you have on the server – hard drives crashes sounds like they would be quite devestating.

  • Matthew October 18th, 2006 at 11:54 pm

    Shaun — the only backup I have happening on the server is for the home directories where documents are kept. None of the media content is backed up — sadly, I do not have the money to do that right now! So I’m taking my chances, but it’s nothing that can’t be replaced. I have lost one drive in the server since I built it in late 2003. It was a Maxtor, and it started hanging and doing the “Click of death.” I was able to get everything off of that drive by sticking it in the freezer for 10 minutes and then copying files off of it for 5 or 10 minutes and then sticking it back in the freezer again to repeat the process. Worked like a charm, only had to do it three times.

    Now, with 7 hard drives, the server has 4 Seagate, 1 Western Digital, and 2 Maxtor drives. As I need new drives, I am only buying Seagates now because I find them to be the most reliable, the quietest, and they are the only drives with a 5-year warranty. Not to mention great sales — the most recent drive was a 400GB Seagate SATAII with NCQ and perpendicular recording that I got for $99 shipped from Outpost.com (normal retail is $190 at this time).

  • Nex November 12th, 2006 at 6:37 pm

    Just wondering:

    What version of the wrt54G do you have?. Are you using the “linksys” firmware or some sort of third party one?.

    How many people live/work/hang out at your place?!?!?. There are a lot of workstation for just one guy ;) .

    BTW. very nice setup !!

  • 9Charms March 5th, 2007 at 3:48 am

    How did you set up your file server with so many hard drives? Did you need a specific ATA card that Ubuntu recognizes?

  • Matthew March 24th, 2007 at 3:36 pm

    9Charms,

    Sorry about the late response…I must have missed your comment!

    Galaxy currently has a two-channel IDE PCI add-on controller card (which adds four additional channels, for a total of 8 including the motherboard’s IDE controller). It’s a pretty standard Promise controller. I also have a two-channel SATA controller in there since I’m starting to move to SATA drives.

  • RogersMJ.com: New article up about remote file access with AFP November 13th, 2007 at 11:29 am

    [...] who know me know I run a decently big file server at home. It’s an AMD system running Ubuntu Server with about 1.6 TB of hard drive space (that’s [...]

  • Shawn Mix December 10th, 2007 at 10:30 pm

    Just wanted to know what you used to create this nice little diagram? I have a similar setup at home with my network, and actually your diagram inspired me to change up the computer names based off of Stargate Ship names. I just wonder what program I can use to make a nice diagram like yours. All I have right now is a Microsoft Publisher flowchart with ugly boxes and lines. I want a pretty picture!! LoL

  • Peter Spee September 11th, 2008 at 9:07 am

    Wow – I think I’ve met my double. I have PCs, Macs, a PS3, a Wii, iPod Touches and a voip box all connected to my network/server. The server is 750GBx8 in Raid6. I currently use Windows XP as my Server OS, but am planning on rebuilding using Ubuntu 8.04. I stumbled across your article because I now use SMB from my Mac, and I find OSX doesn’t do so well with it. Thanks for the endorsement of AFP on Linux!

    peter

  • Jim October 4th, 2008 at 2:22 pm

    Hey…nice network. Glad to see I’m no the only fool out there doing crazy stuff like this at home. I gave you a link to a picture for my home network. Perhaps you could post the picture here for others to see.

  • AFP: Get to your files from anywhere. Fast. | RogersMJ.com October 9th, 2008 at 6:52 pm

    [...] who know me know I run a decently big file server at home. It’s an AMD system running Ubuntu Server with about 1.6 TB of hard drive space (that’s [...]

  • PSA: Always back up your data | RogersMJ.com October 26th, 2008 at 11:42 am

    [...] Now you’ve got a 2.0 TB totally redundant storage system. I plan on sharing out the Drobo on my network and having all my machines back up to [...]

  • Modified Car Club January 7th, 2009 at 10:52 am

    Awsome network setup im envious of all your toys im not allowed

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