Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My Overkill Home Network

blog.networkprofile.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 464 posts

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#271

Post by Karrot_Kream »

ivolimmen wrote: post #227

I find this really disturbing. On the one hand this looks really nerdy and cool but then I see the immense amount of hardware that also relies on power... so much power. This is completely unnecessary but then I also see the pictures of an F150.. so yeah it makes sense. I have to categorize this as a (un)typical American person that does not care about the environment. Do like the fact that he runs a RIPE probe thoug…

I do a lot of similar stuff in my home network with a lot less equipment. I have a trunk switch that sits behind my router, Ethernet running into each of my rooms (came with the house), and small point switches that sit in front of each patch. I have 3 APs in my house. I have a UPS which connects to our router, trunk switch, and a single AP that uses PoE which is good enough if we need Wifi when the power goes down. To much shock and horror, I just bought discount Cat6 cabling and didn't bother buying a roll and crimping and making my cabling look nice (but I did test every point in my network exhaustively to make sure I don't have high amounts of latency or jitter anywhere.)

The rest of the services that OP runs I run on a combination of a 12 year old SBC and a Raspberry Pi. Modern computers (read My IP cameras are all Raspberry Pis that use the camera module and stream using RTSP back to the SBC. Instead of managing VLANs (I do offer a guest VLAN but my partner and friends found it a pain so it doesn't get much use shrug), I run Zerotier through the house. My IP cameras sit on a single Zerotier network. All other services I run internally use Zerotier and if I do accept external traffic, I expose a port on a VPS (like OP) and have some nftables rules which NAT the traffic through Zerotier. I've thought about getting a failover ISP (our area has 2), but our primary ISP offers us fantastic peering (I've exhaustively tested the bandwidth and jitter to the VPS I proxy traffic through) and good enough uptime for me to not bother.

Like a lot of other hobbies, people can get very consumeristic. This is what a consumeristic version of homelabbing looks like. This shouldn't stop you or anyone else from building a humble homelab that can do almost all of what OPs home network does. The key is to test where your network has bottlenecks. I've iperf tested my network exhaustively and frequently look at kernel counters and other things to make sure that my network is performing up to spec, but that's a lot less fun than buying lots of cool networking gear. Much like you don't need an F-150 to get around day-to-day, maybe even just a bike :)

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#272

Post by Toutouxc »

kriops wrote: post #230
ivolimmen wrote: post #227

I find this really disturbing. On the one hand this looks really nerdy and cool but then I see the immense amount of hardware that also relies on power... so much power. This is completely unnecessary but then I also see the pictures of an F150.. so yeah it makes sense. I have to categorize this as a (un)typical American person that does not care about the environment. Do like the fact that he runs a RIPE probe thoug…

I find your comment to be at the absolute peak of sanctimony. Who are you to decide if it is necessary or not? Furthermore, why are you justified in negatively stereotyping Americans – a diverse group of individuals?

A diverse group of individuals who consume 12 MWh of power per capita, while it's around 6 or 7 MWh for modern European countries. It's not even a stereotype, just statistics. (got my data in two minutes from Wikipedia, so maybe not up-to-date)

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#273

Post by Borg3 »

cjdell wrote: post #232
ivolimmen wrote: post #227

I find this really disturbing. On the one hand this looks really nerdy and cool but then I see the immense amount of hardware that also relies on power... so much power. This is completely unnecessary but then I also see the pictures of an F150.. so yeah it makes sense. I have to categorize this as a (un)typical American person that does not care about the environment. Do like the fact that he runs a RIPE probe thoug…

I also have mixed feelings. I stopped home labing because of the energy costs. I now have everything I need (HomeAssistant / NAS / Router) running on an old Dell Precision laptop. Laptops make great servers because they are optimised for low power consumption + you get a free console and UPS built-in! I'm tempted by the new Alder Lake N100 mini PCs that are available on Chinese websites. But I need to wait until the…

Laptops are great servers? Hmm I beg to differ. They are very compressed, so they heat up a lot.

You need low power server? Go for Atom like CPU with good case. My home server running D2550 and 2x 1TB HDD is less than 40W. PSU is cold.

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#274

Post by 8fingerlouie »

I used to have an overkill home network, complete with self hosting everything and 10G backbone.

These days i'm more pragmatic. I have exactly 2 wired machines, and everything else runs Wifi. The network "rack" is simply a firewall and a 16 port POE switch, everything else network related has been retired to the closet.

My NAS is gone. With electricity frequently going above €1/kWh last winter, it seemed like a bad idea to have a NAS sitting there, consuming ~35 kWh/month. Instead i spent about €20/month on cloud storage, and simply upload everything to the cloud (encrypted with Cryptomator), and i have redundant cloud storage (different provider) included in the cost which is where my backup goes.

All that's left at home is a small ARM based machine that handles making daily backups of my cloud data locally, as well as run a small Plex library on a single USB3 external drive.

Besides saving about half my previous electricity cost (as well as all the hardware cost!), i have gained SO MUCH spare time. My firewall is completely closed (save a wireguard VPN), and i no longer have to maintain anything except the normal patch routines.

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#275

Post by fjfuvucucuc »

pprotas wrote: post #245
ivolimmen wrote: post #227

I find this really disturbing. On the one hand this looks really nerdy and cool but then I see the immense amount of hardware that also relies on power... so much power. This is completely unnecessary but then I also see the pictures of an F150.. so yeah it makes sense. I have to categorize this as a (un)typical American person that does not care about the environment. Do like the fact that he runs a RIPE probe thoug…

Snide categorizations aside, there is a point somewhere in your comment. It is a running joke in the /r/homelab community that their servers use an unreasonable amount of power that they have to hide from their wives. It really IS unnecessary, as you can tell by the author of the article referring to their home network as "overkill".

This is why we buy server racks. It turns 5-6 servers into one computer.

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#276

Post by uoaei »

antoinec wrote: post #265
a-user-you-like wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know the man’s power is not cleanly generated?

Looks like he is powering at least part of his installation through solar: https://blog.networkprofile.org/17kw-enphase-solar-install/

What is the CO2e ROI on producing and installing solar, including all the transportation and installation equipment being used?

When is it net-negative compared to pulling energy from the grid?

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#277

Post by jamespo »

femto wrote: post #162

I used to have a home network, until lightning hit nearby. It came up the power connection and the copper phone connection. The modem/router/switch fried, then it spread out though the twisted pair Ethernet and fried every interface connected to the network. These days I use WiFi unless I really need low latency / high reliability in a particular location. Optical would be nice, but WiFi is the poor man's lightning s…

The APC 850 UPS has ports to surge protect the data connectivity.

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#278

Post by abwizz »

cjdell wrote: post #232
ivolimmen wrote: post #227

I find this really disturbing. On the one hand this looks really nerdy and cool but then I see the immense amount of hardware that also relies on power... so much power. This is completely unnecessary but then I also see the pictures of an F150.. so yeah it makes sense. I have to categorize this as a (un)typical American person that does not care about the environment. Do like the fact that he runs a RIPE probe thoug…

I also have mixed feelings. I stopped home labing because of the energy costs. I now have everything I need (HomeAssistant / NAS / Router) running on an old Dell Precision laptop. Laptops make great servers because they are optimised for low power consumption + you get a free console and UPS built-in! I'm tempted by the new Alder Lake N100 mini PCs that are available on Chinese websites. But I need to wait until the…

> Laptops make great servers because they are optimised for low power consumption + you get a free console and UPS built-in

> Make use of the stuff you already have before buying new stuff.

this is the way!

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#279

Post by abwizz »

Borg3 wrote: post #273
cjdell wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have mixed feelings. I stopped home labing because of the energy costs. I now have everything I need (HomeAssistant / NAS / Router) running on an old Dell Precision laptop. Laptops make great servers because they are optimised for low power consumption + you get a free console and UPS built-in! I'm tempted by the new Alder Lake N100 mini PCs that are available on Chinese websites. But I need to wait until the…

Laptops are great servers? Hmm I beg to differ. They are very compressed, so they heat up a lot. You need low power server? Go for Atom like CPU with good case. My home server running D2550 and 2x 1TB HDD is less than 40W. PSU is cold.

typical laptop goes below 10W while serving a gbps of samba

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#280

Post by abwizz »

maleldil wrote: post #260
ur-whale wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have to categorize this as a (un)typical American person Holier-than-thou much?

Americans tend to drive larger cars than other nationalities. These cars use more fuel. Most of these people do not need large cars and would be fine with smaller ones that use less fuel. Therefore, by choosing larger cars, they're using more fuel than necessary. An explanation is that only care about their own comfort, not the environment.

tbf a lot of murricans live in rural environments where a truck does indeed make sense because of the lots of unpaved roads.

city dwellers not so much

Post reply on HN