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My Overkill Home Network

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Re: My Overkill Home Network

#291

Post by abwizz »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #270
gchokov wrote: post #264

My first thought is - imagine hiring this guy to architect your corporate network. The cost would probably be 10x for hardware, for the "just in case" factor and coolness to the setup...

For a corporate network I would love to have more "just in case". We had a day long wifi outage at the office once, productivity plummeted and the cost of that far outweighs the cost of buying and setting up back-up hardware.

it's even more economical to buy more hardware than hire somebody to maintain it properly

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#292

Post by abwizz »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #288
trustingtrust wrote: post #212

Biggest problems I have faced for home networks : ISPs are poorly configured and do very shady things sometimes like DNS hijacking. More often than not poor ONU firmware or hardware means you will see weird things like latency spikes or straight up packet drops. Sometimes IPv6 won't work if the ONU is in bridge mode etc. etc. This post is overkill but what mostly works for home networks: SQM - like cake sqm in openwr…

Why would you use a local DNS resolver instead of using a remote well-known resolver like 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 in a home networking situation? Your systems will cache DNS entries to paper over unavailability issues, and as long as you use one as your primary and the other as a secondary, there's a very low likelihood (probably < 0.0001%) that you'll ever have issues resolving DNS.

because those 3rd-party resolvers are not under your control, which is usually interesting for someone running a homelab, and lie in responses.

"it's always dns" should ring a bell :)

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#293

Post by NKosmatos »

Come on, let's admit it fellow HNers... Most of us are jealous/envious of this network setup and would love to have the money and time needed in order to own something similar. Extra points for powering all these from solar panels and also for all the "little" gizmos (ADB, NTP, LoRa, TinyPilot, MQTT and temp/humidity/power monitoring).

@monstermunch You're living the dream :-)

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#294

Post by komali2 »

kristjank wrote: post #239
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 hope you're trolling. Power can be generated without an environmental impact. There are companies (and F150s) dumping kgbjillions more CO2 than this person's homelab is. Let people learn something and have some fun.

This is the argument that holds the most weight with me. It's why, as much as I approve of Extinction Rebellion and their kin, I think it's counterproductive to deflate SUV tires, when the environment harm caused by SUVs is a fraction of that caused by the companies profiting off oil and gas extraction and refining. If you're gonna do a crime anyway...

It's similar to when there's hypocrisy charges levied against "champagne socialists." Nice virtue signalling for worker's rights for someone with a 6 figure income... meanwhile that 6 figure salary accounts for 0.01% the net worth of a billionaire.

Go for the high stakes first, then we can worry about homelabs pulling more power than they should.

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#295

Post by norman784 »

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…

Maybe you could consider an old framework motherboards? I personally don't own one, but is tempting if you own a framework laptop or are planning on buy one, it seems to be one of the most sustainable options out there.

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#296

Post by djhn »

alex3305 wrote: post #287
SanderNL wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very interesting how awareness of climate change (and let’s not forget: the price of energy) has had so much impact on my and others’ judgement in a relatively short time. 5-10 years ago I would think this is perfectly fine. I believe I was not alone in this, but maybe I was. The energy would have cost pennies too and why whine about it? Now I think it’s exorbitant as well, for me. The F150 etc, it’s tellin…

> 5-10 years ago I would think this is perfectly fine. I believe I was not alone in this, but maybe I was. The energy would have cost pennies too and why whine about it? When I moved into my own home (8 years ago) I brought my 'homeserver' with me. Which was just a simple i5-2600 build with some shucked drives in it. I never thought about electricity prices when I lived with my parents. But that changed rather fast.…

Hold on a second - how large of a household are we talking? House or apartment? What consumes all that power? Electric vehicle? Work from home?

I'm environmentally conscious (0 cars, 0 pets) but I haven't spent any time measuring and optimising electricity usage.

I've had a look at my own electricity usage every once in a while, now averaging 48 kWh/month (between 38 and 68) for a larger than average apartment for two people.

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#297

Post by ryan-c »

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 am not running serious network gear right now due to power, which is ruinously expensive in the UK to the extent that I find myself longing for PG&E's rates in California.

Currently having a house remodeled, which I'm putting as much solar (and battery) on as possible, and the gas is being removed entirely. Going to try not to use more than the system can generate, though I am not sure I'll be successful.

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#298

Post by adrian_b »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #271
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.…

> I do a lot of similar stuff in my home network with a lot less equipment.

This is also my case. For Internet access, I use a router which has 4 2.5 GbE ports for the internal LAN, which was made several years ago with an Intel NUC and 4 USB Ethernet dongles, but which could be done today with a small and cheap fanless router using an "Alder Lake N" Intel N100 or N200 CPU. There are also such small routers with more 2.5 GbE ports for the internal LAN, e.g. 6 or 8. That router implements a lot of network services, including DNS servers for my domain and my own e-mail server.

I also have 5 servers that are interconnected by a 10 GbE subnetwork, but that is done without external switches. Each server has a dual-port 10 Gb/s NIC and they are interconnected directly, in a ring. The servers are normally powered off. Whenever needed, I power on the first of them through Wake-on-Ethernet. Through it, I can power on, also using Wake-on-Ethernet, as many of the others as needed.

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#299

Post by maxmalkav »

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…

I am a big fan of thin clients as servers. It is true you lose the "built-in console and UPS", but they usually come in very nice and compact form factor, many are fanless and consume 10~15W tops while being acceptably capable (in general much more than a RPi but with much better memory and storage specs)

Re: My Overkill Home Network

#300

Post by [deleted] »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #274

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 i…

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