Show me your home networks

[BattFink]

Here's a diagram of my network (tried to keep it as tidy as possible):

Most of the equipment was salvaged from the office when my workplace closed down (with permission of course), so cost suprisingly little to setup

Have you not set your wired devices to have fixed IPs? I do that because otherwise they can't communicate when the router is down (doesn't happen often but useful nonetheless).

No, for me all addressing is dynamically assigned (barring router, switches, NAS etc..), would only experience an issue if the DHCP server is down for over a week or adding a new machine when DHCP is down. Just too lazy to track static IP address assignments

Which DNS servers do you use? I've used OpenDNS for years but browsing is sometimes still a bit slow.

Run my own DNS server with forwarding to a root server (not perfect but does the job)

 

[Phil87]

Have you not set your wired devices to have fixed IPs? I do that because otherwise they can't communicate when the router is down (doesn't happen often but useful nonetheless).

Which DNS servers do you use? I've used OpenDNS for years but browsing is sometimes still a bit slow.

I used to set fixed IPs for port forwarding purposes but haven't needed to do that for many years. I hardly do any internet related things on the other devices anyway so as long as my PC has a reliable internet connection I'm happy.

I used the GRC DNS benchmark and chose the fastest two BT DNS servers from there.

 

[DragonQ]

I used to set fixed IPs for port forwarding purposes but haven't needed to do that for many years. I hardly do any internet related things on the other devices anyway so as long as my PC has a reliable internet connection I'm happy.

I use fixed IPs mainly to connect to my file server and TV server from other machines.

I used the GRC DNS benchmark and chose the fastest two BT DNS servers from there.

Cheers, will give it a try.

 

[FatRakoon]

I just been running a small experiment today.

Keeping cables as short as possible, I have...

Phonebox to modem, Modem to router, router to HomePlug and my 3 NAS drive boxes

I was running a CAT5e from the router to my first switch, which is right near my PC, but now its just to the HOMEPLUG and now this way all the other devices are collected in their own little area connected to a swicth, that is now connected to a HomePlug.
I was half doing this anyway, but now I have moved the NAS Boxes, the Modemand the Router all into the kitchen, and my Main PC, and Main Linux PC only have the wiring for themselves and not for all the other rubbish, and the living room is a tad cleaner for it.

So far, all the devices have been working flawlessy, and they can see each other as they should and they all have full access to the printer, the NAS Drives, the internet and everything.

The biggest hit that I have had, is that the HomePlugs are a mixture of 200 and 500Mb and so the speed has dropped hugely, but it is in trial and I needed to make sure that it all worked as it should before I spend any money on more homeplugs and they are available at Gigabit speeds now, so I will buy them soon, once I know I am happy with the network as it is.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

This is about 18 months old, but you get the gist

 

[DragonQ]

Ideally I want the living room equipment (TV, HTPC, Receiver, Xbox 360) connected straight to the main patch panel and switch but I need to figure out a way to do that.

 

[bulletv1]

Bought a cable dump panel to tidy up in the cab and I quite like it

 

[BigT]

I'm not very good with diagramming tools, but here's my effort. I'd love to replace the powerline with ethernet but the constraints of a Grade II 500 year old house prevent me from doing so easily. I'm also lucky in that I don't need the speed where the powerline is and fortunately they stay stable which is the important bit for me.

 

[ov_sjo]

Few bits to get sorted yet.....

 

[alex24]

Just ordered some bits for my new (old) house. Had Cat5e wired pretty much throughout (1 or 2 drops chased in per room that needs it all terminated in my office). Gone with:

6U Black network cabinet (similar to some above)
1U 6-gang power strip
1U Brush cable tidy
1U 24-port Cat5e patch panel
1U 24 port NETGEAR JGS524E-200EUS ProSAFE Managed Switch
24 0.5m patch cables
20 Cat5e faceplate modules (will buy matching faceplates for whole house when decorating is done!)
Networking 19-piece toolset

This will be connected to my old ASUS RT-N56U and an openreach fibre modem and then a bunch of devices in most rooms (mostly smart TVs will be wired in or APs as needed).

I'll upload some photos when done (should be within a month).

Any tips for installation?

 

[Praetorian]

Had the house I purchased 3 years ago completely wired with CAT6 in each room along with all the electrical work (easier to do before I moved in). All the connections end up, including BT & Virgin endpoints (used to have Virgin before I swapped) under the stairs where I have a 12u rack.

Rack: ALLMETALPARTS 12u 500mm rackmount
UPS: APC SmartUPS 1400 that has everything in the rack connected to it (run time is about 45 minutes)
Internet Connection: Dual A&A 1TB FTTC connections terminated on BT Openreach modems doing PPPoE bridging
Router: Mikrotik RB951G-2HnD (wireless disabled) that's doing the WAN bonding in tandem with A&A's end. Also takes care of DNS and DHCP (IPv4 & IPv6)
Switching: HP Procurve 1810-24G (due to be retired for a Ubiquity 24/48 port POE switch either 1gb or 10gb) with multiple VLANs
WiFi: Ubiquiti Networks UAP-AC-LITE WLAN Access Point via PoE on 1st floor giving full coverage over the entire house
Virtualisation Host: Custom 4u build running E5-2660 Xeon, 128gb of RAM, 6tb spinning rust (virtualised file server), 2x 512gb SSDs (data stores), Quad NIC + onboard IPMI
Virtual Machines: Local Ubuntu APT cache, Windows 10 desktop for HDMI extenders, Windows 2012 Backup Endpoint, Windows 2012 vSphere management console, SSH Bounce Host, OpenVPN Appliance, Domain Controller, Squid Proxy etc.
HDMI Extenders: Mirabox 1080P 120m HDMI Extenders (VLAN'd off due to being VERY hard on switch fabrics. Fed from dedicated graphics card passthrough to a Win10 VM
VOIP: SNOM 821 handset connected into Sipgate for SIP trunking

Bedrooms 1 & 2: LG 22" 1080p TVs fed via the HDMI extenders

Office/Bedroom 3: Desktop in signature.

Am giving serious consideration to fully virtualising my desktop and having that run inside ESX as well including my 980ti's. Will be an interesting experiment And also the inevitable upgrade to 10gb NICs + switching.

At somepoint I'll get Mikrotik's The Dude up and running to draw a network diagram; if not, back to Visio