This page has been archived. It no longer is an accurate representation of my home network, but it is kept for informational purposes if anyone is curious about the setup.

[ Updated in October 2006. Three PCs were removed and replaced with an iMac. File server capacity increased to 1.6 TB. ]

I have a rather complex (for a home) network setup in my apartment, and often am 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 to distribute media and files. You’ll notice that the main file server has a storage capacity of 1.6 TB (1,600 GB), and the combined resources of the network total up to 3.0 TB. 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 loading it from a video file on the server. Same goes for all my music and software. If anything I had 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 CD except for the operating system (Windows, Linux) one.

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.

There are actually three routers on the network, but Base Star is the only one truly functioning as a router (more about that later). It 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, only a couple are (like my main workstation, Galactica), and the rest are automatically assigned the same IP address every time by the router via 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 two switches, a Linksys and an SMC, connected in series below Base Star. Switches are, essentially, smart “splitters.” The green lines on the diagram indicate that the cable between the two is connected to a regular port on the parent device but the “uplink” port on the child device (the one farther down in the diagram). This is how switches must be connected in order to trasmit data upstream. If you want to know more about how switches work, there’s lots of other good articles out there. Google is your friend.

Raiders 1 and 2

These two routers, as I mentioned before, are not actually functioning as routers. They’ve been dumbed down and essentially only act as switches now. This is done by deactivating their DHCP servers and connecting them to the rest of the network via their fourth port (which automatically switches to an uplink port). You do not use the WAN or Internet port on routers in a situation like this. If you do, you won’t be able to communicate with computers connected to them. Why are we using routers as switches? Well, it’s because we needed switches, but all we had were extra routers. Rather than buy a switch, why not use what we have?

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 500MHz Pentium III 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 6.06 server on there, using Samba 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: 160GB, 250GB, 250GB, 250GB, 300GB, and 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 (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 1,000 GB is occupied.

Client devices (TiVo, Xbox, workstations, laptops)

The rest of it is pretty self-explanatory, I think. These computers and devices have various operating systems, but they all connected to Galaxy for one reason another to get their content (except for the TiVo of course), or in the laptops’ case connect wirelessly to Base Star to get online.

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.