Home network thoughts

[Risky]

I've always had a few computers on the go, at the moment all under one desk with a KVM. WIth the (hopefull) house-move I'll have a bit more space and it might be time to work out a sensible arrangement.

Now at the moment I have one non-working watercoolign project and a hard-working mATX box (Celeron-T 1Gig!) for general use. There would be another matx box for linux play except it never quite gets built.

Now over the next while I'll be looking to build a HTPC and might even have a laptop on the go. I'd vaguely like to think about a server based config sao I could look at my email from either machine. Also there's a case for centralisign file storage as opposed to relyign on various local shares to find whatever pic/music/file you want on a give box.

If I was to build a server, obviously I could use if for storage, but what I'm now thinking is coulkd I centralise the mail storage so I woulds be able to look at my stored emails from any machine ? (Two users each with muliple email accounts).

I do have that Raid 5 card and various possible harware which might help the cause. Potentially I could move the home lan up to Gigabit, wondering if this might allow me to use the network storage for the HTPC storage?


Again this is a slightly medium-term thought, but there might be some value in this route.

[scopEDog]

I use my htpc as my file server also and created users/folders for everyone to use. Its raid5 which is sufficent for my storage/backup needs, so what your planning sounds like a good solution.

[fivecheebs]

Network storage for the HTPC should be no problem. If you think about it even a 100Mb network will be faster than a single HD. In a raid 5 array that might not still be true but would still have plenty enough bandwidth for whats needed.

As i said in the other thread, all my storage for the HTPC is on my server which is an old 950 duron with SDRAM, connefcted through a 100Mb network.

[jaguarking11]

No need for gigabit unless you got more than 10 simultaneous machines transfering at the same time. just get a good switch if you dont alredy have it. Another thing I would avoid like the plague is HUBS. Never use those poor excuses for networking devices. A hub will fubar your network trust me on this.

BTW im a netcom major and in no way I want to brag but I have first hand experience and no home user realy needs gigabit. Gigabit lines wether coper or fiber optic are better suited for backbones. Hard drive technology isnt fast eough to bring a 100megabit to botlenecking unless you got some kind of high speed sci drives in raid arrays.

[Risky]

I'm on a 5 port Dink Switch at the moment. Just might make sure any cabling I put into the new place is up to standard for the future.

Bear in mind that at the moment the pices have fallen a lot. Currently a DGS-1008D is GBP48 excl at ebuyer.

[Starbuck3733T]

I'm on a 48-port 10/100 Avaya Cajun P334T switch with hard runs to all the places in my house, and the switch lives in my basement. I have 4x100MB lines into my office, 2 of which are teamed together for goliath's use. There is a single 100MB line out to the replayTV in the livingroom (my wifes) which sits on its on VLAN to isolate it from broadcasts - they slow it down immensly when you're pulling stuff off of it.

As for the wireless, I have a Dlink DI-614 Wifi/Router with the router bit shut off (no wlan interface plugged in, dhcp turned off), basically a simple AP. I also hav a netgear 824 wifi/router (also w\ the router shut off) as another AP for the bottom floors of the house, where as the Dlink sits up stairs in my office.

Connection to the internet is handled by a Cisco PIX 515E firewall.

As for file server connectivity, I have VMWare ESX running on a dual proccesor box in the machine that runs my domain controller, MS exchange (for email) and a backup server. Storage is handled by my media center machine, with an 4 channel adaptec SATA raid card in it and 4 250GB drives for 1TB of goodness. Network conenctivity to that is a pair of teamed 100MB lines plus a direct gigabit line to goliath (fiber crossover). The array is currently sitting at about 15% usage.

(the fiber crossover is because most of my recompress/encode/gigantic photoshop work comes off of goliath, and I don't have the 60ft SX fiber cables needed to get to the 1000BaseSX fiber modules on the avaya switch in the basement, so I bypassed the middleman and ran a crossover, though I persistant needed a static route to make it always use that pipe to talk to the media center)

Backup is handled by a P3-600 running server 2000 talking to a 40/80GB DLT tape driver. Software is Veritas BAckupexec 9.1. In addition to backup to tape, the last 4 sets of incrementals and 1 full backup are saved on an HP SureStore Backup/NAS device (which runs NT4 embeded).

:eek: :cool: :wacko:

edit: server 2000, not 200!

[jaguarking11]

goddam thats allot of equipment and allot of money. What do you do with all that? Your home network sounds like a up to spec corporate network. Bet it runs flawlessly. good job.

[Starbuck3733T]

Yeah it is a lot of equipment, but most of it cost me next to nothing. The tape driver was $20 at a friend of mine's company auction, ditto for the SureStore backup to disk appliance - which was a whole $5 :eek:. The switch cost me nothing, as its the same thing I use at work and I brought the spare home so I can use my home network as a bit of a 'test farm'. Though it won't matter much anymore, we're getting rid of the lucent switches and replacing them with 3com stuff. The dual processor isn't too fast (its a 600) and that also came from salvage land @ work. The router/aps were bought retai. The media center machine was a purpose-built box.

I use the setup to learn, to experiment, and generally to have fun with.

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

with 3com stuff.
I thought the networking world stayed clear of 3com stuff after their difficulties a few years back? I know my Uni got hosed when 3com pulled out of networking for a while so they now only use Cisco kit.

[Risky]

Nice setup. A little beyond my needs perhaps. However I do plan to cable up the house properly so I have a bit of scope.

Now if I was just doing filesharing I could use my spare Win2k licence, but would I be better on Linux?

Ideally I'd like to centralise the mail storage but really haven't a clue where I'd start.

[scopEDog]

Sorry to go a bit off topic but...god damn SB you could probably host all the websites in nyc with your setup :D

..and we now return to our regularly scheduled program already in progress:

I think just to keep it simple any win2k box would suffice as network storage. I used to have outlook point any new emails to a pst and store that on a server.

[Risky]

I think just to keep it simple any win2k box would suffice as network storage. I used to have outlook point any new emails to a pst and store that on a server.

That's not bad. I have a old copy of Outlook '98 which would do the job. However that would mean I needed Outlook on every machine....

[fivecheebs]

hmmmm ... thinking out loud here ... may or may not work.

I use an email client called Foxmail (http://fox.foxmail.com.cn/english/). Its a very nice client, and free. You can set up mailboxes with a specific path. Maybe you could run it on the server, leave it running and checking every so often and point the client machines to the server copy of the files.

Might have to give that a try actually, never really bothered with a server for mail as we dont really recieve many. I dont even have a client on my main PC at home. Theres foxmail on the lappie and outlook on the HTPC but we rarely use it.

[Starbuck3733T]

Sorry to go a bit off topic but...god damn SB you could probably host all the websites in nyc with your setup :D

..and we now return to our regularly scheduled program already in progress:

I think just to keep it simple any win2k box would suffice as network storage. I used to have outlook point any new emails to a pst and store that on a server.

Was doing that before I got the exchange server in, and I'll say that wireless to a largish PST can be slooooooooooooo.....

[Risky]

Well I have a bunch of accounts as does my wife nd there's some we really both need access to ideally. Looking arounf there are stack of GPL exchange replacements, but maybe what I need is just an IMAP server?

[Starbuck3733T]

yup pretty much

[Risky]

So I go hunting and find: http://macallan.club.fr/MMS/index.html

Seems to be about right. Any better suggestions?

[Starbuck3733T]

It's been ages since I ran a mail server on anything but linux that wasn't exchange. But that thing is IMAP and IMAP != X400 (Exchange). Should do the trick tho.

[Risky]

I guess I should really go the linux route, but is is going to be a vast amount of work to set up a server with an exchange equivalent etc?

Hardware-wise I do actually have a GX Slot 2 board and a pair on Xeons (550?) but somehow I have to guess that there's a fair chance it won't work.

Probably better with an ordinary board and some vague moder kit.

[zer0]

I'm on a 48-port 10/100 Avaya Cajun P334T switch with hard runs to all the places in my house, and the switch lives in my basement. I have 4x100MB lines into my office, 2 of which are teamed together for goliath's use. There is a single 100MB line out to the replayTV in the livingroom (my wifes) which sits on its on VLAN to isolate it from broadcasts - they slow it down immensly when you're pulling stuff off of it.

As for the wireless, I have a Dlink DI-614 Wifi/Router with the router bit shut off (no wlan interface plugged in, dhcp turned off), basically a simple AP. I also hav a netgear 824 wifi/router (also w\ the router shut off) as another AP for the bottom floors of the house, where as the Dlink sits up stairs in my office.

Connection to the internet is handled by a Cisco PIX 515E firewall.

As for file server connectivity, I have VMWare ESX running on a dual proccesor box in the machine that runs my domain controller, MS exchange (for email) and a backup server. Storage is handled by my media center machine, with an 4 channel adaptec SATA raid card in it and 4 250GB drives for 1TB of goodness. Network conenctivity to that is a pair of teamed 100MB lines plus a direct gigabit line to goliath (fiber crossover). The array is currently sitting at about 15% usage.

(the fiber crossover is because most of my recompress/encode/gigantic photoshop work comes off of goliath, and I don't have the 60ft SX fiber cables needed to get to the 1000BaseSX fiber modules on the avaya switch in the basement, so I bypassed the middleman and ran a crossover, though I persistant needed a static route to make it always use that pipe to talk to the media center)

Backup is handled by a P3-600 running server 2000 talking to a 40/80GB DLT tape driver. Software is Veritas BAckupexec 9.1. In addition to backup to tape, the last 4 sets of incrementals and 1 full backup are saved on an HP SureStore Backup/NAS device (which runs NT4 embeded).

:eek: :cool: :wacko:

edit: server 2000, not 200! :drools:

damn man only thing i would do diffrently is using linux instead of windows... (for the servers that is i dont realy care what my desktops run) and imnot a fan of exchange.... but sounds good.

as far as the main topic you could set up a linux server to do that or you could just tell your mail app to not remove the mail from your mail server so eatch computer that you check you mail on would get the same emails... (i think thunderbird can do it...)