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I Let Claude Build My Home Network: Two ISPs Bonded, $312/Year Saved

jonathanclark.com

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Re: I Let Claude Build My Home Network: Two ISPs Bonded, $312/Year Saved

#21

Post by jclarkcom »

jfernandezr wrote: post #19
nickphx wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeaaaaaah .. something the llm didn't explain is how asymmetric bandwidth or latency between the connections will degrade performance... or how many services like streaming, banking, gaming will restrict, block, or otherwise treat the connection differently because the traffic now exits via a datacenter or VPN IP/ASN..

Also the DigitalOcean deoplet includes 500GB per month, which for me is absolutely limited. Last month I consumed about 10TB.

That's a very good point. I included a "Cost Comparison by Bandwidth Usage" section that shows the cost for Digital Ocean compared to a commercial bonded solution. At 10TB the monthly DO cost goes up to $84/month which is significant, but if you compare that with a commercial solution that gives you a bonded connection (Speedify) they would charge $120/m for 10TB.

If you used Oracle cloud, I think 10TB is still in their free tier so you'd be looking at ~$15/month.

Re: I Let Claude Build My Home Network: Two ISPs Bonded, $312/Year Saved

#22

Post by ctoth »

nickphx wrote: post #12
ctoth wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Dropbox is an afternoon project for any Linux user, right? Right?

If you believe the two are similar in complexity and effort, you have much to learn.

I believe your comment pattern matches to the classic comment 9224, was the point I was making. Yes, this might be easy for you.

> an llm managed to generate some iptables rules and sysctl settings that have been well documented for years..

> you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.

But the whole point of the blog post is that a person who didn't know how to do it did the thing. If the thing is the goal, they succeeded. They now have a thing they didn't have before, after not knowing how to do that thing. A new capability was unlocked by the LLM.

Please generalize this.

Re: I Let Claude Build My Home Network: Two ISPs Bonded, $312/Year Saved

#23

Post by kemotep »

It would be cool if the output that that the LLM made (commands it ran to harden, the iptables, MPTCP config, etc.) was included in the post.

It seems incredulous that this didn’t take dozens of back and forth prompts and fixes. It was able to one-shot deploying a digital ocean droplet and configure wireguard?

Re: I Let Claude Build My Home Network: Two ISPs Bonded, $312/Year Saved

#25

Post by dfajgljsldkjag »

jclarkcom wrote: post #4
sema4hacker wrote: post #3

To save money, I would have just switched to ATT fiber like you did, drop Xfinity completely, and try that for awhile. It's worked for me for years, and my only downtime has been a few times during winter storms when the power goes out completely.

nice. I wish fiber was available for me. I only had access to AT&T's copper service (DSL) but they do 2-pair bonding so speed is not far from Xfinity.

Your AI slop said you have fiber, so maybe you should try to actually read it instead of having us catch your lies.

> 1. Downgraded Xfinity from $90/mo to a basic $50/mo plan (still usable speeds, just lower tier)

> 2. Added AT&T Fiber as a second line at $55/mo (different infrastructure = different failure modes)

> 3. Bonded both connections using WireGuard VPN and OpenWRT routing

Edit:

Another lie detected: ATT isn't accepting new customers on DSL, and is in fact yanking service for existing customers in many areas. So there's zero chance that OP signed up for ATT copper internet within the last year or so.

https://www.att.com/internet/dsl/

Re: I Let Claude Build My Home Network: Two ISPs Bonded, $312/Year Saved

#26

Post by jclarkcom »

shermantanktop wrote: post #11
nickphx wrote: post #5

oh boy, how amazing... an llm managed to generate some iptables rules and sysctl settings that have been well documented for years..

If you are starting from relative ignorance about the topic, then yes, it is amazing. But it does mean that the user can build a solution that they don’t understand well enough to maintain.

I've experimented with using LLM to setup and/or maintain some servers for me for various different use cases (this being one). What I like is an agentic LLM can either document it's initial build process or "explore" your server to better understand how it works, what configuration files are used, software versions installed, etc. When you have that documentation/context provided to a frontier LLM it can take care of most maintenance work you'd like do by hand for "simple" servers. A good prompt to get an llm to explore an existing server to make sure it fully understands it is to ask it to make a working backup.

Re: I Let Claude Build My Home Network: Two ISPs Bonded, $312/Year Saved

#27

Post by jclarkcom »

kundi wrote: post #24

You completely neglected the egress cost for DO, and also the time / maintenance needed, which makes this a poorly engineered fantasy

Harsh, but a good point on egress cost that I overlooked, I'm adding a section on this - if you use Oracle cloud it looks like you get 10TB included at no additional cost where DO would be around $84 at the same bandwidth levels

Re: I Let Claude Build My Home Network: Two ISPs Bonded, $312/Year Saved

#28

Post by woleium »

satertek wrote: post #18

My first concern would be using a digital ocean droplet as a VPN. Last time I tried that, datacenter IP ranges often made things slower or unusable.

this. the cameras are not the only thing that won’t work

you could use an azure VDI machine as a cloud endpoint, i believe those ips are flagged correctly. It’s not this cheap though.

Re: I Let Claude Build My Home Network: Two ISPs Bonded, $312/Year Saved

#29

Post by jclarkcom »

kemotep wrote: post #23

It would be cool if the output that that the LLM made (commands it ran to harden, the iptables, MPTCP config, etc.) was included in the post. It seems incredulous that this didn’t take dozens of back and forth prompts and fixes. It was able to one-shot deploying a digital ocean droplet and configure wireguard?

Here are some of the commands it used (censored & auto-generated) with a few specific examples at the end: https://jonathanclark.com/posts/bonded-internet-connection-c...

> It was able to one-shot deploying a digital ocean droplet and configure wireguard?

Yes, that part was pretty easy - but the whole thing wasn't one shot. The parts I struggled with were: - getting automated SSH installed on the $130 router, once you have that the LLM can drive things - during security hardening, I got fully locked out and had to recreate a new VM. But it was able to automatically recreate everything in a few minutes.

Re: I Let Claude Build My Home Network: Two ISPs Bonded, $312/Year Saved

#30

Post by jclarkcom »

dfajgljsldkjag wrote: post #25
jclarkcom wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nice. I wish fiber was available for me. I only had access to AT&T's copper service (DSL) but they do 2-pair bonding so speed is not far from Xfinity.

Your AI slop said you have fiber, so maybe you should try to actually read it instead of having us catch your lies. > 1. Downgraded Xfinity from $90/mo to a basic $50/mo plan (still usable speeds, just lower tier) > 2. Added AT&T Fiber as a second line at $55/mo (different infrastructure = different failure modes) > 3. Bonded both connections using WireGuard VPN and OpenWRT routing Edit: Another lie detected: ATT isn…

Thanks for your response, I'm acknowledging it and taking to heart.
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