Discussing home networking - What does your network look like?

[Aquinus]

Thanks for a completely irrelevant topic sparking some discussion on what kind of routers everyone has and of course I had to be the asshat to point out to @OneMoar that my "router" was bigger since a "my router is bigger" pissing contest started occurring and I had to jump in. Not to say we should continue that here, but I am curious how everyone has their networks setup.

When I say this, I mean to ask the following:

• What do you use for a gateway/router?
• What does your network topology look like?
• How many devices and what kind of traffic do you need to worry about? (local and external)
• ...and one of the best questions of all, why did you do everything the way that you did and what would you or are you going to change in the future about it?

I'll be answering these questions about my own network shortly but, I wanted to get the ball rolling. For people who can put their words to posts faster than I can.

 

[Mussels]

Dynalink rta1046vw adsl2+ wifi G VOIP router (wifi disabled. its old, but the modem works well on my old phone line. same era tech i guess) DMZ'd to a TP link WDN3600 GigE, wifi N600 dual band router w/ USB ports that i use as an FTP server.

Only other notable thing is a buffalo QVL quad bay NAS modded to include the transmission torrent server, which i use a windows program (or android app, remotely) to remote control. All media is played back via PC's or android over samba file sharing - 1080p playback over wifi works well.

Network is set up with WAN speed limits set by the TP link router, so that no one group (my stuff, waifu to be's stuff, guests/unclassified) can get past 60% of the upload or download speeds, meaning both of us need to be aggressively downloading or uploading before any stuttering and delays can occur on the network. Torrents run on a schedule, slow during the day (approx 30% network speed) and 60% at nights.

Laptops, phones and tablets use the 2.4Ghz band and congest it up nicely, with my file server and gaming PC being excluscively on the 5GHz band, achieving 19MB/s thanks to some crappy aluminium foil reflectors.

 

[remixedcat]

Active:

Modem: Arris cm820a
Router: Cisco Meraki Z1
Managed switch: D-Link DGS-1210-10P (PoE)
Access points: Cisco Meraki MR12/2 x Aruba RAP109s

WLAN adapters: Amped Wireless ACA1, Netgear A6200, Edimax AC600, RalinkRT5390 WLAN,Atheros AR5007EG, Intel Pro 2200BG, Realtek RTL8188CE


Inactive:
Routers: Amped RTA15, R20G, Netgear WNDR4500V2, WGR614v9
Access points: Dlink DAP260
HomePlug: Netgear (too lazy to look, Amped PLA2

 

[Kursah]

Mine is very simple... Asus AC66r handles Gb lan, 1 WAN, and 2 WiFI. My workstation is also set to be the media share server. I have a local/home WiFi not broadcasted, and a local WiFi that is broadcasted but is limited to what can be viewed and bandwidth used. The AC66r has great range...I have a huge back yard and have signal all through it...sure an AP would make the signal stronger...I'm usually down to 1-2 bars at the far end. My modem is provided my Charter..and it does it's job.

I let the standard firewall rules for the AC66 take place...haven't used a different firmware for more thorough management yet. Hoping to snag a SonicWall someday in the future for when sh!t gets real!

For now I have a very basic setup that's easy to manage, and so far is pretty solid. My main workstation, PS3 and test bench are all using the switch ports on the router. Laptops, Nexus 7 and upstairs PC (her's + kids) on internal WiFi. Cell phones on external WiFi...along with guests.

I do plan to rewire the house for more Ethernet options, and installing a Gb switch in the future to assist with this option. I also plan to try a DDWRT firmware and explore the deeper QoS and Firewall rulesets. At this point I'm sooooo much happier compared to my POS Belkin router (I may use it as an AP at some point though). Overall so much more simple than the networking projects I do at work. Though the stuff I play with at work I wish I could afford! Right now I'm minimizing power usage as my hours for work have been cut due to college. So not much for upgrading or new toys until next summer sadly.

I do plan a NAS/Ubuntu Server in the future. Contemplating messing around with a homebuilt PF-Sense router next summer too...more for the experience.

 

[d1nky]

I've just got a router from virgin media using fibre optic straight to main pc, and Laptop, mobiles etc 2.4ghz connected via wireless for home network.

Im wanting to set up a NAS or similar so i can DLNA/stream to all devices around the apartment without main pc being on. Also thinking something like chromecast plugged into all TV's so i dont have to always plug the laptop via hdmi, which is PITA! ATM just got a shared folder on the main pc with all devices streaming from it.

Also got mobiles linked via bluetooth to my pc which can be loaded straight to the network folder, which is ideal for photos etc.

edit: picked up a cat6 10gbit cable yesterday, coming from cat5e and there was no difference (1m)

 

[Batou1986]

Motorola SB612
Netgear WNR3500L + DD-WRT
Cat 6 everywhere

 

[OneMoar]

Motorolla SB6141
Asus RTN-66U with 15DBI antenna's running DDWRT

 

[Aquinus]

Before you read anything, remember I live in a house that was built in 1901. Wiring wasn't exactly in mind when they built it.

Alright, so my setup is a work in progress. It's a temporary arrangement until I can redo some Coax and add some CAT6 and design a closet for telecom and server equipment. As it stands, I need to have my modem in my living room which requires everything else be there as well as it is the only good Coax jack in the apartment (super PITA).

My setup right now (as a tree):

• Modem: Motorola SB6141
  • Multi-purpose Gateway server: Mid-tower with a Phenom II 960T quad-core, 1x1Gbps WAN, 3x1Gbps LAN (non-switched, dedicated ports).
    • Linksys E4200 : Serving 2.4Ghz & 5Ghz Wi-Fi
      • Panasonic TV (Netflix and DLNA)
      • Xbox 360 (Games, DLNA)
      • All wi-fi clients.
    • Netgear AV500 Gbps Powerline Adapter pair
      • My tower

There are only a couple wi-fi clients. The laptop my wife uses, her tablet, my phone, and my laptop (which I almost never use at home). My tower has an AE2500 adapter in it, but there is no Linux support, so I fall back on the powerline adapter for Linux.

A little bit of explanation about the gateway/router.
It's got a quad-core, 4Gb of ram, an 80Gb drive, and 3x1TB drives in RAID-5. It has two onboard PCI-E network adapters and two ports I added from a dual-port Intel 1000 Pro PT PCI-E card. It's doing everything because I don't have the space in my current configuration to have more than a single headless tower for wired access to the network (WTF! I know!). For this reason it serves, in addition to your typical network services like DHCP, Firewall, and VPN, I have a RAID in the box for storage, as a result Samba and miniDLNA are running on the gateway for access to that data. I use it for large downloads (to avoid wi-fi and powerline) to take full advantage of my 119mbit download. I also have a DNS server running locally for local names and caching to speed up DNS requests which allows me to restrict all incoming and outgoing DNS traffic and my iptables config are just as strict for external connections. I also do some development on it from time to time. I haven't found that any task I throw at it to slow down network performance (yet) so I don't worry about it.

I do this all because I don't have any wires and I don't want to put everything in my office. My i7 tower, plus AC (in the summer), plus air purifier makes a lot of noise and I don't need more machines in here to add to it. So *just* running wires alone won't cut it. I need a closet dedicated to telecom for at least my apartment and the attic which has yet to be finished (but already has the extra (something like 115v 4x30A circuits IIRC) circuits to wire in power when that does happen. So my first idea was to make a closet in the attic, problem solved! Except I don't know how the rest of it will be done and I don't want a random closet that would happen to end up being poorly placed with respect to the rest of the attic. So that puts off the possibility of putting a closet in the attic (but not running wires through the floor) which would open up the possibility of the basement.

The problem is getting the wired network from the basement up here. The most direct and open way to get it up here is not a short path (considering it's going from the basement to the attic). The benefit is that the basement is always cool but never leaks, great for hardware. The bad side is it requires running potentially considerably more wire and investment in expensive technology to accommodate the run length (fiber for the link from the basement to attic to serve a switch for the attic and second floor.)

So there are no easy fixes for me. I need to do some designing.

 

[Aquinus]

Managed switch: D-Link DGS-1210-10P (PoE)

What do you use the PoE for? Do you have VoIP and some network-powered phones or do you power remote switches with it or something along those lines? I've been debating starting an asterisk server to start a "home phone" and something like that would be in my future if I wanted some physical phones without a power adapter. Granted, that's all contingent on me making my network sane.

 

[remixedcat]

What do you use the PoE for? Do you have VoIP and some network-powered phones or do you power remote switches with it or something along those lines? I've been debating starting an asterisk server to start a "home phone" and something like that would be in my future if I wanted some physical phones without a power adapter. Granted, that's all contingent on me making my network sane.

Powers and connects the access points.

 

[newtekie1]

Modem: Not Sure, whatever Comcast gave me. 105/25 Connection

• Router: ASUS RT-N66U w/ TomatoUSB Installed and provides 2.5 and 5.0GHz Wireless N for bottom half of my house
  • Linksys E3000 w/ Tomato USB providing 2.5 and 5.0GHz Wireless N for top half of my house also acting as a wired switch
    • Samsung CLP-315W Printer
    • Office Computer
  • Xerox Phaser 8560 Network Printer
  • Rosewill 8-Port Gigabit Switch
    • Media Server
    • Work Cloud Backup Server
    • 500Mbps Powerline Adapter
      • LivingRoom HTPC via Powerline adapter
      • Second Bedroom Media Box(XiosDS) via Powerline Adapter
    • TP-Link 8-Port Gigabit switch
      • Main Rig
      • Bedroom HTPC

Wireless Devices, connection varies depending on location in the house: 2 Laptops, 2 Smart Phones

All the connections are wired gigabit, except the powerline connections.

The Linksys E3000 was my original router, but it didn't cover the whole house very well. My connection comes into the basement, so the router lives down there. I could connect to the E3000 on the upper level of the house, but the connection quality was poor. So I bought the RT-N66U to replace the E3000. I could have actually just used the RT-N66U since its signal was strong enough to reach the top level and give a good quality connection. But I figured I had the E3000 so I might as well use it as an access point an switch upstairs.

The two ports were both given to me for free as review samples. They replaced a Linksys 8-Port gigabit switch(which had a super noisy fan) and a 5-Port Rosewill gigabit switch.

Future plans? None really. I could upgrade to wireless AC, but with so few devices actually taking advantage of it, I don't really see much point. Though I am thinking about upgrading the powerline adapters to the new 1000Mbps ones that are coming out.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

• What do you use for a gateway/router? Netopia 3341 (I think) ADSL gateway + D-Link DGL-4500 router
• What does your network topology look like? Router is at the center of the house with a desktop and two printers plugged into it. There's a 50-75' cable going to my room which has a Netgear 8-port unmanaged gigabit switch (can't be arsed to fetch the model). All cable is CAT6 UTP or CAT6 FTP. There are two up to six computers plugged into the switch. There's generally four wireless devices (two phones, two computers).
• How many devices and what kind of traffic do you need to worry about? (local and external) Since there are no SSDs here and the fastest hard drive RAID is ~100 MB/s, I can't really saturate my local network. The bottleneck is definitely the internet coming into the Netopia gateway (3 mbps / 384 kbps).
• ...and one of the best questions of all, why did you do everything the way that you did and what would you or are you going to change in the future about it? Necessity and the router's CPU has crashed a few times so it needs to be replaced sooner or later.

 

[ZeDestructor]

• What do you use for a gateway/router? Dell Optiplex 980 running pfSense inside ESXi for routing. A selection of 4 different ADSL2+ modems get used as, well, modems. The Broadcom and, rather shockingly, Ralink modems seem to be the most reliable down here in Australia...
  
• What does your network topology look like? Router sits next to my desktop, on top of Netgear's GSM7352S 48-port Layer 3 switch. Said switch has had it fans swapped for much quieter ones. From the switch, cabling goes round with LACP to ESXi and desktop, and plain old gigabit for various access points (all 802.11ac at this point) and devices that have an ethernet port. Really, if it has an ethernet port, it gets plugged in. I also have a VLANs configured for when I need to poke a slow modem to find it's status (without unplugging/disconnecting from the internet) as well as development networks for assignements and stuff from uni.
  
• How many devices and what kind of traffic do you need to worry about? (local and external)?
  • LAN: Main laptop is all-SSD, and desktop is a combination of SSDs and RAID0 HDDs. Oftentimes I complain to friends on IRC about the lac of 10Gbit ethernet at sane prices.
  • WAN: still woefully limited to 18/1 (CURSE YOU ABBOTT & TURNBULL!)
• ...and one of the best questions of all, why did you do everything the way that you did and what would you or are you going to change in the future about it?
  • pfSense inside router: because I could, and hell, good learning experience for ESXi
  • LACP: why the hell not/because I could. A box of CAT6A next to a 3/4 empty 48-port switch gives you the strangest ideas/justification...
    
  • 48-port switch: I needed more ports (just in my room, I need ports for modem, desktop, 2 laptops, ESXi box) and I got an epic deal on that particular switch second-hand
  • Multiple access points: place is large enough we need more than one. And they work as switches so my housemate can have his laptop wired in if needed.
• Future plans? Possibly get one of the new Linksys 48-porters... 48-ports of shiny, shiny fanless silence.... According to the datasheet....

 

[remixedcat]

BTW I do have two VLANS one main and one for guests.

wired only guests get designated ports on the switch that are configured for guest VLAN only.

 

[Frick]

Netgear WNR2000 or something and that's it. Connected to my wall which goes to an net owner switch or something.

Fun fact - in a previous apartment Nortons network map thing picked up everyone connected to the net switch, so I could get the IP adresses for all my neighbours.

 

[remixedcat]

APARTMENT HELL!!

Yikes can't they like... VLAN or somethin'???


Or like..use some isolation shiizit???

 

[ZeDestructor]

APARTMENT HELL!!

Yikes can't they like... VLAN or somethin'???


Or like..use some isolation shiizit???

You assume they know what VLANs are to begin with, and that their switch supports it...

 

[remixedcat]

Well if they don't they need to fire the network engineer!!

 

[hat]

My modem is some type of Arris DOCSIS 3.0 box. Linked to it is my ASUS RT-N66R. I got that router as a sort of no-nonsense overkill solution to lag issues we were having with their crappy modem router combo. It's just ethernet cables here and there and mixed wifi n/g supporting whatever devices we have. I should check up and see if I can switch it to n only...

There's 4 computers, 2 phones, 2 ps3s, a ps4 and some other handheld stuff (vita, not sure what else) going on...

 

[Disparia]

WD came out strong with 4 models then decided that home networking wasn't for them. It's not a bad unit by any means, but there haven't been any improvements or fixes since mid-2013 so I've started looking at other units. I've seen remixedcat mention the Meraki Z1 before and I'm considering purchasing it at some point in the future.

The USB storage is there simply because when you go to enough conventions you end up with a lot of flash drives and they can be possibly useful plugged in or not useful at all in my desk drawer.

Wiring is all Cat5E that I did years ago when I had a D-Link DGL-4300. Partially in-wall, but there are some runs on the roof and walls. Network kit:

 

[agent00skid]

A TWG870TS Modem+Router+Switch+Wireless, where I then run 3 ethernet cables to my 3 machine. And that's it. ,

Can't use the wireless right now, else my phone would be using that.

 

[Jetster]

Motorola SB6121 Surfboard Modem (I own)
Netgear WNDR4300 router
Gaming rig is hard wired specs under avatar
HTPC is hard wired and serves as a NAS specs under avatar
HTPC in bedroom connected with a TP Link TL-PA511 Kit Powerline adapter

 

[remixedcat]

Jizzler you will like the z1. Let me know before you get itcsince you need to pre-config it since its cloud configged.

Airspeed is the cheapest PayPal accepting retailer and cdw if you have a cc. Got mine for 160 inc 3 yr cloud software lic.

 

[natr0n]

Since my modem died I'm using this rented all in 1 unit.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Here is my setup in tree form cause I am too lazy to make nice graphics like jizzler. It is not very sophisticated but the idea is everything inside the network runs on the gigabit routers for best media server performance. Edit: fixed

ActionTec MI424WR-GEN2 (FIOS 75/35) 5x 100/100mbit

- LG 55in LED HDTV Smart TV
- D-Link DIR-655 Router

- Trendnet TEW-633GR 5x 1 GB (This uses two ports because one is setup for bridging with the D-Link

- Desktop
- Office Printer​

- 8x 1 GB unmanaged Rosewill (the one Teckie has and recommended. It works great for $35 )

- 4 TB Qnap NAS (Media Files)
- Media Server
- VM Host( VPN, PVR, Development)
- Office computer​

- WLAN

- 2 ipads, 2 smartphones​