The Network...

Entry posted by Whaler_99 March 22, 2014

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Every good system boils down to the network. This is the underlying foundation for your entire setup. If this isn't rock solid and supports everything you need to do, it doesn't matter how fast that rig of yours is, you will still lag as your switch drops packets due to a network flood.

Most people seem to think when they need one, the thirty dollar switch is just a good as the fifty dollar one. Most cases they are correct, when you only have a few connections not pushing the limits of the switch. But, a two hundred dollar one? In networking most times you get what you pay for. There are reasons why we have five hundred dollar switches and five thousand dollar ones. Course some brand names carry their own costs, <cough> cisco <cough> but that is another story... Why do I rant away on this? So, you might better understand why I have some of the gear I have. Because when it comes down to it, I do not want the network to be the cause of any issues in the house.

So, first off, I have my main network hub in the crawl space. Coming into the house I have my cable connection on which modem I have reset in bridge mode (don't get me started on these crap cable and DSL modem/router units) and use my own firewall.

The firewall is a higher end SonicWall unit. Why this? Due to my job, certifications and partnerships I have access to this and other gear a very low costs for personal use and training. So voila... For those of you that know, I am running all the security services on the unit.

Feeding of the firewall is what I referencing as my "server" switch. This is a mid range HP 24 port GB switch with a very decent back plane. Off this switch are all my secondary connections as well as my Folding farm, which also resides in the crawl space, my Hyper-V server, unRAID server and my voice server. I also have a redundant one sitting there. Why... just in case and because I could.

From this switch I lead out to:

My wireless AP unit, an Aruba unit, powered via PoE, which is nice. I ran cabling up through wall and roof and this sucker sits nicely hidden away on the main floor.
A HP GB Switch, a specific edge model, to my main desk. I have a few of my desktops there, test beds, etc.
A low end HP GB switch at the main media area, hooked into this is a HTPC, media streaming device and few other things.
A powerline adapter for one of the bedrooms. I always wanted to test this and was having wireless issues to this one spot, so voila. And works really well.

All the networking gear in the crawl space runs off a nice UPS, mostly to protect against power surges. Don't forget a good power surge unit for that shiny gear.

All in all a fairly complicated setup and more then what 99% of home users need, but I work a lot with this gear, so I also do lots of testing and such as well with this gear. Should hear people scream when I reboot the firewall to test something.

As you can see, my underlining network is more then adequate to support the throughput I may have from various sources. The system gets hardest hit when say all of the kids are streaming movies from the unRAID server (I use PLEX, what an awesome product), as well as some buddies and lots of folks on the voice system. Then myself playing some game or other... But everything works without a hiccup.

Now I just need the cable company to stop calling me because I am flooding their network.