What's your home network like?

Deleted member 77746 · 10 Jul 2011 at 18:58

Talbs13 said:
Why are people running Active Directory When you probably have less than 5 people in the house

How ridiculous and a tiny bit sad.

I agree, if it was in a virtual machine for testing configs e.t.c but having it running with logins/GPOs/software is wayyyy OTT for home users! Especially if theres less than 20 clients!

ecksmen said:
Active directory gives you a lot more than just the ability to centrally control user accounts. The AD in my house is 99% for testing & training purposes, however thanks to folder redirection and DFS namespaces I have a rather resilient desktop, and the ability though remote desktop gateway to vpn into a virtual desktop from anywhere with an internet connection.

For home users ... OTT!

Tingle said:
Active Directory is unbelievably simple to setup, and to have it running is good for practice, and I can't see no reason why not to have it in a home network.

Where's the point in not having it?

Licence costs? oh wait I bet most people on these forums run it illigally. Running full blown AD is mad! May aswell buy one of these Home Servers with Windows Home Server OS! Less complex and more user friendly.

Deleted member 77746 · 10 Jul 2011 at 19:01

My network consists of...

1 ADSL Router (WiFi N) to all other devices. That's all I need to say. No logins, no OTT AD network or nothing just plain n simple bobs your uncle network.

TNGL · 10 Jul 2011 at 19:16

iDroid84 said:
Licence costs? oh wait I bet most people on these forums run it illigally. Running full blown AD is mad! May aswell buy one of these Home Servers with Windows Home Server OS! Less complex and more user friendly.

You can run Active Directory off of a Linux Server. Also, you might find that people have Technet subscriptions for testing. Although, yes there will be some who're running it illegally, but if I'm honest... who cares (other than the people who've made the OS/Software).

Also, you may find that having a simple network is okay (which it is), but some people have different needs so they might make their network a little more advanced.

3dcandy · 10 Jul 2011 at 19:17

slightly off topic, but idroid84 fancy giving me a google+ invite?

Deleted member 77746 · 10 Jul 2011 at 19:18

Tingle said:
You can run Active Directory off of a Linux Server. Also, you might find that people have Technet subscriptions for testing. Although, yes there will be some who're running it illegally, but if I'm honest... who cares (other than the people who've made the OS/Software)

Who cares? not me but running a server for the sheer hell of it pffff ridiculous! As for the legality side of it..... the law.

3dcandy said:
slightly off topic, but idroid84 fancy giving me a google+ invite?

I promised myself I wasn't going to invite anyone else but go on then email me in trust, last one.

slylittlefox · 10 Jul 2011 at 19:31

bigredshark said:
Massive unneeded complexity? Reliance on another machine to log in if you're making use of it's features? Waste of electricity running machines? Why would you have it is the more pertinent question surely...

How am I expected to run Exchange without AD? And would you not recommend AD for small businesses (ignoring cost implications)?

I'd also ammend that to

Yes, only the chosen few know how to setup AD - anyone on less than £60k per year and working outside of Canary Wharf doesn't really know what they're doing.

What's the need for the snobbish/pompous attitude?

Deleted member 77746 · 10 Jul 2011 at 19:38

slylittlefox said:
How am I expected to run Exchange without AD? And would you not recommend AD for small businesses (ignoring cost implications)?

Yes, only the chosen few know how to setup AD - anyone on less than £60k per year and working outside of Canary Wharf doesn't really know what they're doing.

What's the need for the snobbish/pompous attitude?

Who the hell would want to run exchange from home when theres perfectly free solutions out there or even paid cloud exchange solutions.

bigredshark · 10 Jul 2011 at 19:41

slylittlefox said:
How am I expected to run Exchange without AD? And would you not recommend AD for small businesses (ignoring cost implications)?

Yes, only the chosen few know how to setup AD - anyone on less than £60k per year and working outside of Canary Wharf doesn't really know what they're doing.

What's the need for the snobbish/pompous attitude?

Depends on the requirements, I see hosted exchange as a better solution for very small businesses (or GAFYD), for larger, sure, run AD. But the thread title is *home* networks. Running exchange at home in anything other than a training/dev capacity on a VM is over the top and less than sensible for practical reasons too.

I'm just calling out the statement it's unbelievably easy to setup AD. That's not true, people make £100k a year designing and admin-ing AD for a reason, not every monkey can do it and for network which scale properly it's not obvious or straightforwards. Setting up AD for 5 computers at home should not fool people into thinking they're suddenly able to do it for 250+ machines in a business scenario. Saying otherwise encourages people to do so and makes more work to tidy up later.

ecksmen · 10 Jul 2011 at 19:46

bigredshark said:
I've never understood that - fine, have a setup for testing if you need it at home, which I guess some self employed people will, but integrating it into your home network and desktops? Really, so when you're trying something new and it doesn't work, you've now broken your home network for watching iplayer and the like? That's a slightly strange version of resilience and why my home network consists of an expensive router and an access point - it needs to work all the time, it's a utility, that isn't achieved by massive complexity and having it interlinked to testing systems for work purposes.

You'd have to do something rather special to do what you suggest. Even if AD somehow self combusted, cached logins and dns etc... is still going to mean next to no interruption for internet use. Nothing I do at home is anything special, and it's all backed up as well. In the 3 years of running this set up (in various forms) I've never had issues like you've suggested.

Each to their own, but labs are extremely important for me. I couldn't careless about power usage.

slylittlefox · 10 Jul 2011 at 19:54

iDroid84 said:
Who the hell would want to run exchange from home when theres perfectly free solutions out there or even paid cloud exchange solutions.

Because it's more cost effective to run from home? And far, far better than any free solution.

If MS were offering Office365 for free, sure, I'd use it. But £20/month for email when a few hours work gives me it for free - naw.

Deleted member 77746 · 10 Jul 2011 at 19:55

slylittlefox said:
Because it's more cost effective to run from home? And far, far better than any free solution.

If MS were offering Office365 for free, sure, I'd use it. But £20/month for email when a few hours work gives me it for free - naw.

It's not cost effective to run anything from home at all. I mean... you tell me this is cost effective.... go back n replan ur network, you fail.

http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/4162/homenetworky.jpg

PS. Where do you get your prices from because the last time I looked google docs is free and so is gmail!

slylittlefox · 10 Jul 2011 at 19:58

bigredshark said:
Depends on the requirements, I see hosted exchange as a better solution for very small businesses (or GAFYD), for larger, sure, run AD. But the thread title is *home* networks. Running exchange at home in anything other than a training/dev capacity on a VM is over the top and less than sensible for practical reasons too.

I should qualify that we run three businesses from home, so it's not like it's just for sending an email to relatives

I'm just calling out the statement it's unbelievably easy to setup AD. That's not true, people make £100k a year designing and admin-ing AD for a reason, not every monkey can do it and for network which scale properly it's not obvious or straightforwards. Setting up AD for 5 computers at home should not fool people into thinking they're suddenly able to do it for 250+ machines in a business scenario. Saying otherwise encourages people to do so and makes more work to tidy up later.

I'm not arguing with any of that - nor suggesting that being able to do it for a small network will allow you to do it on an enterprise scale. What I am saying is that most people are perfectly capable of setting up a small-scale AD deployment, yes, it may not be perfect (mine is, of course

) but to suggest that they haven't got a clue what they're doing is a bit off.

Some of us might do it as part of our work aswell...

Deleted member 77746 · 10 Jul 2011 at 20:01

Tingle said:
Although, yes there will be some who're running it illegally, but if I'm honest... who cares........

slylittlefox said:
I should qualify that we run three businesses from home, so it's not like it's just for sending an email to relatives

Then if your a business, I hope you do run all them products legally.... including licences for software

slylittlefox · 10 Jul 2011 at 20:03

iDroid84 said:
It's not cost effective to run anything from home at all. I mean... you tell me this is cost effective.... go back n replan ur network, you fail.

Is it necessary to talk to anyone on here like that? Just because you don't see a need for it, doesn't mean there isn't one.

PS. Where do you get your prices from because the last time I looked google docs is free and so is gmail!

Yes, I hadn't considered Google Apps, and I'm not already a Google Apps customer, and I don't already manage hosted Exchange for a number of companies.

Shove your know-it-all attitude up your ****!

slylittlefox · 10 Jul 2011 at 20:05

iDroid84 said:
Then if your a business, I hope you do run all them products legally.... including licences for software

Yawn.

Microsoft Action Packs

bledd · 10 Jul 2011 at 20:08

Play nice gents..

Deleted member 77746 · 10 Jul 2011 at 20:12

slylittlefox said:
Is it necessary to talk to anyone on here like that? Just because you don't see a need for it, doesn't mean there isn't one.

Yes, I hadn't considered Google Apps, and I'm not already a Google Apps customer, and I don't already manage hosted Exchange for a number of companies.

Shove your know-it-all attitude up your ****!

Play nice

That stuff belongs in a data centre. Plus this wasn't a business network thread it's a home network. You no, little networks lol

I am also sure going for other solutions would be more cost effective than what your running.....

slylittlefox · 10 Jul 2011 at 20:20

OK mate, despite not having a clue what it is that I do, or what it's used for, you know best xxx

TNGL · 10 Jul 2011 at 20:28

C'mon guys, this is a thread for people to share what their home network is like. It's not inviting people to come along and criticize other people's network and complain about how it's OTT or how it's not cost effective, I'm pretty sure this topic's not supposed to be about that seeing as I created it.

slylittlefox · 10 Jul 2011 at 20:29

Exactly!