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Networking Technology

What's in a Typical Geek Home Network? 183

Posted by Cliff from the more-esoteric-than-hubs-and-workstations dept.
Mike D asks: "I have several machines on my home network (A Mac OS X server, a few Windows XP desktops, a G4 workstation, etc.) as well as various devices (wireless base stations, VPN/firewall) and always have spare machines around that I'm torn on what to do with. So, I wonder -- what do 'typical geeks' have on their home networks? What items do you feel are a requirement, what are luxuries, and what is just cool stuff that I should integrate into my own network? Of course, suggestions should be cheap/free/use existing hardware I can find around the house."
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What's in a Typical Geek Home Network? More

What's in a Typical Geek Home Network?

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  • Obvious answer... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Plac3bo ( 651890 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @03:30PM (#12530818)
    HTPC/DVR ... MythTV

    • Multimedia (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Andy Dodd ( 701 )
      Definately the best use for a home network is media distribution.

      You can use cheap Cat5 cable with lots of choices in your architecture and cheap switches, as opposed to shielded audio cables and either shielded composite video cables or coax cable, either of which require a star topology for the "network". While in many cases a central media server containing all content makes sense, unlike with traditional "home media networks" (coax RF or baseband distribution), a centralized server is NOT required.

      In
  • consists of a G4 PowerBook, two WindowsXP machines (one connecting to the router wirelessly, one wired), a Macintosh Classic (which I'm forever trying to make work)... and sometimes some old laptops like a 486 laptop or a 166MHz Pentium laptop. Then just cable modem and linksys router with wireless.

    I keep wanting to look into the thing Apple makes where you can send music wirelessly to your stereo and stuff... if I had the money.
    • what do 'typical geeks' have on their home networks?

      Porn! I don't know if all of our girlfriends are related, but they all have the same last name (Jpeg).

      But honestly - a true geek's home environment is one of experimentation, with a sub-set of it set aside for getting real work done (playing games, coding, multimedia, etc.)

      My network consists of a four box cluster of Dell 400sc boxes (single 2.8GHz HyperThreaded CPU, 2G RAM, GigE NIC in each, on a GigE backbone) all coming through a 4-way KVM to a nic
      • It's all about the experimentation. Most people would have no idea why would even be trying to get my old Mac Classic I recently acquired hooked up with everything else.

        My desktop is my primary experimentation machine though... it has Slackware 10.1 and WindowsXP Pro in dual-boot, with Slackware as the default (trying to be more Linux proficient). And so I use this box to mess around with operating systems (I used to mess around with BeOS a few years ago) and programming (usually end up using Windows for
    • You either need to trade the classic in for a SE/30 with ethernet card, or get a cheap ethernet/localtalk bridge. The localtalk ISA card in a linux machine is a bitch to make work...
      • I have the Dayna Pocket SCSI/Link. The thing is, that because of the RAM in the Classic (its not maxed out) I'm limited to using System 6. I haven't found any browsers that will run on the amount of memory I have... and the only way I can figure out to do filesharing is with AppleTalk (over Ethernet)... but for some reason the Mac Classic only sees my Powerbook if it's directly connected with the cable, and not through the router. And it doesn't work anyway, when I try to access the AppleTalk server on m
        • Sys6 appletalk is buggy by anyone's call, as I've read. If you do max out the ram, you oughtta be able to do sys7.something, and things will be a bit easier. I didn't have luck with the SCSI/link things myself, had to use a Dayna ethltalk bridge.

          4 years now I think, and the localtalk ISA card still doesn't work reliably. But the machine is a piece of junk, and I'm finally replacing it with something to be proud of, a 4u black rackmount server, that has dual pentium 3s and 17 pci slots (and still an isa slo
        • Regarding AppleTalk -- the troube is that older AppleTalk implementations were done with LocalTalk, an early TCP/IP incompatible communications protocol. Apple later came up with a tunnelling scheme. I'm not really sure if they've stayed with that scheme or changed their protocol again. In the end, your symptoms all make sense. LocalTalk traffic can't get past the router, because the router doesn't know how to deal with that stuff.
          • oh poop. :-(
          • LocalTalk has nothing to do with it (it's used to implement a network interface on a modem/printer port). AppleTalk is its own protocol, and if your router can't understand it, it can't be routed. Older routers could handle this just fine (within a LAN anyway), but as more people moved to IP-only routers, Apple simply added an IP layer to compensate (but had to drop some of the cooler features of appletalk, like what they're only now trying to emulate in rendezvous). The IP layer is of course incompatibl
      • I've got an SE/30 with an Ethernet card in storage, but I haven't hauled it out in ages because it can't connect to my OS X machines on the network. ;-(

        Anyone have an answer to this besides installing Linux 68k?
        • You should be able to run a fairly decent sys7 on that, use ftp/http and so forth. Appletalk connections though, are going to be near impossible though...

          BTW, you know you can put as much ram in that thing as some eMachines were selling with as recently as a year ago, right?
        • With an SE/30 and the rather modest requisite RAM, you should be able to run the free(beer) System 7.5.5 pretty nicely, which means you can use OpenTransport, which will give you pretty good TCP/IP support. And that, of course, means you can network it to anything.

          FTP (e.g. Fetch) is probably your best means of transferring files between that box and any other machines. Put MacHTTP on it, and you've got a decent low-volume web server. iCab is your best option for a web browser; it's both modern and com

      • You either need to trade the classic in for a SE/30 with ethernet card, or get a cheap ethernet/localtalk bridge.

        My Mac SE (68000) with its Asante SCSI-to-10BT adapter works well enough as a toy web server. Don't everybody visit just now (it's quite vulnerable to /.ing) but take a look sometime tomorrow or whenever at: oldmac.toddverbeek.com:8012

      • It works, although no ethernet. How far from Perth, Western Australia are you? (-:
      • Billion 7100 ADSL router
      • KingMax 5-port switch
      • Minitar wireless router (incl 4-port hub)
      • 3x Mandrake Linux desktops (1 is 2005LE, 2 are 10.1) being
        • 2x Athlon ~2400 (512MB, 200GB / 256MB, 80GB); and
        • 1x dual-PentiumPro 200 (196MB, 40GB); and
      • 1x Mandrake Linux laptop (2005LE, Pentium-M 2.4GHz, 512MB, 40GB)
      • 1x Mac SE 30 (no ethernet)
      • 1x BBC Acorn (floppies, no ethernet)

      Would like to add 1x Mac PPC-based box to run some edutainment titles we have. Donations happily accepted in Western Australia. (-:

      • So your Mac and Acorn are connected via sneakernet.

        I suppose in that case I could count the 64K Tandy Color Computer 2 I have in the closet and which is sometimes in use for old games and messing around. (also have a 512K CoCo3 somewhere)
    • What's the point? Just hook up a small or old (depending on your tastes) computer to your stereo and stream the music through your network. Far cheaper, far more customizable, generally far better.
      • the Apple thing is cooler tech to me, and more stylish, and its small... also would consume less power... i dont feel like putting another computer in the family room (assuming i even have enough parts laying around to make another one).
  • You probably already have what you may need (except the MyhtTV box which you may or may not know that you need) so add old stuff you DON'T need. I have kept an old TP/BNC hub around simply because the Amiga's Hydra network cards are BNC only. I plan on adding the two A2000s I have in the attic to my home network any year now. This is in addition to the Gentoo Linux fileserver, MythTV box, AMD64 workstation, notebook and NetGear WiFi AP / FW that already are connected. Oh, and then there's the digital photo
    • You damn amiga ethernet owner's are an elitist bunch! Complaining about having to use 10base2, for crying out loud. I have to use arcnet for my 2 amiga 2000's, and the 4000 isn't even on the network at all. (If anyone has the Amiga Doubletalk (localtalk) z2 nic and wants to sell it, let me know...). I finally broke down and bought a Contemporary Control's PCI arcnet for my linux router though.

      About the only nic not in the linux machine at this point, is a PCI HIPPI card. But I'm working on building one of

  • Backup (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rueger ( 210566 ) * on Saturday May 14, 2005 @03:42PM (#12530892) Homepage
    Best thing that we ever did was take one old Pentium box, stuff it full of drives, and set up Second Copy [centered.com] to back up essential files every couple of days.

    Turn on the backup box, fire up Second Copy, and an hour later everything critical on our network has been backed up with no work and no thought.

    It even syncs directories between the laptop and desktop machines.

    Beyond that we have one PIII/Win2K, 1 P4/XP, 1 PII/Win98, 1 linux box, one laptop, one HP5P, one HP 990 inkjet, scanner....

    • Seconded. I'd even go so far as to get a specialized backup box like a Buffalo Linkstation or a Mirra. Quieter, and probably more reliable than an old pentium as well. Old boxes have a tendency to flake out for me.
    • Here's how I do it:
      • Dual G5 Mac running OS X Server 10.4
        • 23" Cinema HD display
        • Serves DNS, DHCP, AFP, OD/AD, SMTP, POP, IMAP, HTTP, FTP
      • Home brewed P4 Win XP box
        • KVM switch connected to same KB and monitor as G5
      • Aluminum 12" Powerbook connected via AirPort
      • iBook SE Graphite also connected via AirPort (Daughter's)
      • Apple Airport Extreme base station in home office
      • (2) Apple Airport Express WPA relay stations
        • Living room, connected to stereo for iTunes listening
        • Daughter's room, connected to speakers
  • Typical Geek Home Network? Well, there is no such thing.

    The geekier you get, the more varied you'll find the network to be. On the non-geek side, things are probably pretty standard -- at least one computer (probably not more than two or three, however), maybe a cable modem router, printer, etc.

    On the extreme geek side, you'll probably find many computers, of various types, running various operating systems. There is no real `typical' -- for the real geeks, every network will be different. If needed, there may be wireless stuff -- either WiFi or something similar, or maybe something done with ham radio or Cybiko terminals, for example. His fridge may be part of the network, allowing him to see how cold his caffinated beverage of choice is. (Though that's not really as cool as one might think, so many geeks skip that sort of show-off thing.)

    If there's WiFi, you may find antennas outside, where the neighbor (or fellow geek a mile away with a high gain antenna) has been invited to share in the bounty.

    have spare machines around that I'm torn on what to do with.
    Well, it depends. If you want to be a true geek, you'd already know the answer to that question -- and the answer would depend on you.

    If you're just a wannabe geek, you'd install a different OS on every one (probably all Windows based (95, 98, XP, 2000, etc.) if that's all you know), hook them all up, leave them powered on all the time (sucking up lots of power for the machines and for cooling if it's hot where you live) and then tell all your friends how cool you are, while you probably never touch them again.

  • Simple network, relatively speaking (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BrianRaker ( 633638 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @03:43PM (#12530905) Homepage Journal
    Active machines:
    1 Linux server/workstation (SMBfs, LAMP, etc...)
    1 Win2k workstation
    1 WinXPPro PVR (hooked up to a 27" TV, BeyondTV)
    1 IBM ThinkPad 600 [XPPro](primary system)
    1 Apple iBook 600mhz [OSX 10.3.9](on it's deathbed)
    1 Dell Latitude D600 [XPPro, FC3](work laptop)

    Dead/Inactive
    6 Macs (PM6100, PM9600, 2 G3 servers, two classic 680x0-based systems; all operational)
    2 dead laptops
    2 dead desktops pending recycling

    The desktops are all using Intel eepro1000 GigE workstation NICs connected to a cheap GigE switch (I've maxed it out at 60MB/s thruput :/ ) The switch is connected to a WRT54G WAP/Router (using stock firmware, I've a second WRT54G that I'm playing with the Sveasoft firmware on). This all connects up to the housemate's Cayman DSL adaptor/router.
    • Dead/Inactive

      Actually, I think you hit the nail on the head.
      What separates the true geeks from the rest of the pack is not the current, operational and productive hardware on his subnet - it's the quality of the dead / obsolete hardware he has. Any clown can have a P4 1.6GHz chip laying around as a toy, but a true geek has something out of an IBM Model 32 or something from a Cray XMP class supercomputer (I had the CPU board from one of these for quite some time, lost it during one of the last three moves
      • I, too, am fond of the old stuff. I have an original Macintosh, VAX, HP PA-RISC, Alphs, SPARC, SGI, PPC equipment from various points in the last 20 years. I also have an iBook, and an Athlon64, but those are just for useful stuff, not fun. (unless I am playing a video game, or something...)

        I'd honestly be hard pressed to list all the architectures I have if I include the shed, and the garage. Eventually, I plan to work on heterogeneous distributed databases and automatic load balancing with my little
    • I'll second your choice for GigE, considering how good and cheap entry-level unmanaged Gigabit switches such as the Linksys SD2008, SMC 8508T, D-Link DGS-1008D and Netgear GS108 have become.

      I recently tested [soltesz.net] the SD2008 performance using specialized equipment, and this switch is amazing: it really does line rate to all ports, fully non-blocking.

      I am renovating a loft and I am fitting 14 RJ45 sockets scattered around various areas. Probably overkill, but I'll be happy I have all these ports when I'll hav

  • * Low speed PC server (Linux)
    - File sharing (NFS,Samba shared)
    - home automation server (Apache web server)
    - TiVo app server (JavaHMO)
    * Two desktop PCs (Wife: WinXP, Me: Linux)
    * Spare PC running WinXP (headless, used via VNC)
    * Two TiVos networked
    * WiFi AP
    * Two router/hubs incl. DSL wirewall/model
    * Two Wifi enabled notebook PCs (WinXP & Linux)

  • in a closet far far away (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jahf ( 21968 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @03:51PM (#12530950) Journal
    Way back when I used to have a number of Cobalt RaQ/Qube servers running (primarily work related), a couple of Linux servers, router, multiple switches, this, that, the other thing.

    I quit. It was pointless.

    Now I get by quite happily on:

    Linksys WRT54G wired/wireless router (yes, with the hacked firmware and a spare unit for backup)

    An old Linux server that I rarely turn on anymore, mostly as an emergency "oops, I need to fdisk this drive" or "I need to offload these ISO images" and then turn it back off.

    A dual opteron workstation (Sun W2100z) with enough RAM and disk space to work as my main gaming rig (which means windows .. if Linux gamed well I'd switch it back but it doesn't do I haven't) as well as a few concurrent VMWare Linux instances (for work and fun).

    A relatively old linux laptop (P3-600 Thinkpad X20) running my home server. It is robust, does enough web/email/etc serving for 24/7 needs, has a battery for when the main UPS runs out, can go wireless for hacking in the living room, and in a pinch can go with me (but I don't do this much given I have static services on it).

    A decent P4-2.4Ghz laptop that I take on the road with me. Gaming in a pinch. 1 drive has Win2K mostly because I didn't want to use WinXP on 512MB of RAM with an MMORPG. The other drive has various Linux partitions for working remotely.

    A wireless/wired Squeezebox (networked audio player) in my living room.

    Various wireless cards for guests.

    Dual CAT-6 lines I ran to the living room during a remodel that are connected to my closet in the back. I don't use them yet, but figured it would help future-proof the house and once used them for hooking up my desktop out in the living room but decided it wasn't worth it.

    Soon to be installed is a wired Vonage broadband VOIP adapter (purchased, not used yet, waiting for my number transfer papers to go through), keeping 1 landline for emergencies.

    Outside of my house on the roof is a Linksys WET-11 for bridging my wireless internet connection.

    And that is after cutting down!
  • 1 OpenBSD firewall (w/ DSL modem, built-in wireless) 1 FreeBSD file server 1 Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition (domain controller) 1 UltraSparc 10 Elite3D, running Solaris 10 1 UltraSparc 10, unused 1 Windows XP gaming machine 1 Gentoo/XP box for general computing 1 PC, unused 3 Accounts on co-located boxen: 1 Linux, 2 Windows Server (the way I use them, they're very much "on my home network") And 1 Mac Mini, as soon as I can comfortably afford it (might have to wait 'till I leave Black Rock City) I c
    • 1 OpenBSD firewall (w/ DSL modem, built-in wireless)
      1 FreeBSD file server
      1 Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition (domain controller)
      1 UltraSparc 10 Elite3D, running Solaris 10
      1 UltraSparc 10, unused
      1 Windows XP gaming machine
      1 Gentoo/XP box for general computing
      1 PC, unused
      3 Accounts on co-located boxen: 1 Linux, 2 Windows Server (the way I use them, they're very much "on my home network")
      And 1 Mac Mini, as soon as I can comfortably afford it (might have to wait 'till I leave Black Rock City)

      I

  • mine (Score:2)

    by astrashe ( 7452 )
    A linksys router with a phone jack, from vonage.

    Another linksys router plugged into that, for my wireless network (I had one of those, so it was cheaper than getting an access point without a router).

    2 PCs -- one about 1Ghz, the other at about 2Ghz, both dual boot with linux and XP, but mostly running linux. One machine can feed video to my tv.

    I have a third PC, a 700Mhz Dell, which isn't doing anything because it's slower and I don't really need it.

    3 laptops, all old and slow. Two thinkpad 770x's, on

  • X10 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cloudspot ( 837893 )
    Home automation for sure. Imagine every light and appliance at your command all the time from anywhere.... Robotic camera's that follow the dog back and forth across the back yard all day long.....and you can watch from work. Super Cool!

    • Re:X10 (Score:3, Interesting)

      by NoMoreNicksLeft ( 516230 )
      As a person who finally got x10 working with his linux box (why would you ever want to use this with a machine that doesn't have crond?), I can say x10 is *very* overrated. There are a few lights that I automate, but most would be just as happy with those outlet timers for $1 for the dollar store.

      I have an appliance module on our subwoofer (and lirc with a pb ir remote control thingy makes it remote controllable -- finally). I have another on the cable modem, so I can reboot it remotely, cheap piece of RCA
  • My father goes through laptops on an annual basis (the company gets him a new one, and I get the old one), so I have a few o fthey lying around. In its current configuration, I've got...

    * My desktop (2Ghz, also acts as the media server)
    * An old IBM Celeron desktop I got from the library, that feeds video to the TV
    * A Celeron ThinkPad, that feeds video to the 19in monitor next to the dinner table
    * My roomate's dersktop (acts as another media server)
    * A Toshiba Portege (my main "work" laptop)
    * A second (larg

  • Mine (Score:2)

    by Utopia ( 149375 )
    Desktop:
    XP Media Cender 2005 P4 2.8GHz 2GB

    Laptops:
    Toshiba Tablet PC XP SP2
    Old Toshiba Tecra - Win 2K
    Older Laptop - Win98

  • one laptop (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mlc ( 16290 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @04:26PM (#12531147) Homepage
    I have a 5-year-old laptop (PII/333) hooked up directly to a cable modem. It runs mutt, firefox, and ssh. What more do all you people need in your homes?
    • What more do all you people need

      Well I'm not going to claim to have a 'real life' but I do a pretty good job simulating one in Virtual Reality.
      Can't do that on a PII/333.
  • Today on my wireless network:
    • My Athlon 64 desktop, file server, print server, DVR
    • My Dell laptop from work
    • Wife's Dell laptop
    • 5 y/o daughter's laptop

    When I get time, I'm adding a small wireless PC just to stream video to the big TV. My 1.5 y/o son is getting close to being able to use a mouse. I'm waiting for a good deal on a wireless print server.

    Yes, all Windows. Shrug. My desk at work has 2 Windows and 3 Linux boxes if that makes it any better.

    I used to have a SparcStation, an old Mac, an Op

  • 1) Firewall/Router using BBI Agent software running on an old Pentium machine.

    2) Server with VIA Mini-ITX motherboard and 4 x 120Gb hard disks running Fedora Core 3

    3) Old Compaq laptop running Redhat 9

    4) Mac Mini which has just been upgraded to Tiger

    And not a Microsoft machine to be seen.

    Ed Almos
    Budapest, Hungary

  • Right now, I've got:

    • mythtv box with 420gb disk space, in a nice case, hooked up to tv only
    • (ancient) airport base station (snow)
    • old g4 15" powerbook
    • new g4 12" powerbook
    • recent dell laptop (work PC for running windows-only stuff)

    In the not-too-distant future, I'm going to be telecommuting full-time, and add:

    • even newer g4 powerbook (so we can retire the old 15" pb)
    • another linux box (for work)
    • a newer router/ap
    • maybe a mac mini to replace the mythtv box
    • maybe another linux machi
  • Lets see ... *turns around*

    AlphaServer with about 15 old scsi drives - one needs a place to play with all these volume managers and tricks they offer

    Old athlon with about a Tb of disks hanging on its 3ware card, all exported via NFS

    One big UPS to handle all the junk around it

    DEC MicroVax w/ VT320 running VMS and a 486 on top of it used for network bridge (DECNET baby!)

    SGI Indy w/ camera (sweet toy :) and Indigo2 w/ 21" SGI monitor (remote :)

    Some piles of various parts, cables & co junk

    Of course,
  • How can you claim to be a geek without a linux box on your network? This is the minimum requirement. You even have a spare machine around.

    In every geek home there should be at least 1 linux box to even be considered a geek. After that points are allocated as:

    1) 1 point of your linux box is gento or debian/unstable
    2) 1 point for each BSD machime
    3) 2 points solaris, irix, aix machines
    4) 2 points for a rack mount
    5) 1 point for each active machine without a cover
    6) 1 point for each *nix poster on the wa
  • Went to the discount Computer place on Duane street in Santa Clara (what, don't all Slashdot readers live in the Bay Area?) and picked up a couple of upgrades to my home network.

    Currently, the fiancé and I have four CPUs:

    -Dual 2GHz G5 (Heavy lifter for Photoshop and Framemaker, and also the FAX machine)
    -PowerBook G4 Ti (for catching up on Slashdot anywhere in the house)
    -StinkPad A21m (fiancé's personal system)
    -IBM Personal System 300 (itunes Server)
    -A Canon 1560

    The Macs are running Panther and
  • First off, I have 1.5/768 DSL coming into the house from Speakeasy. It goes to a Netopia R910 router, and from there my Ethernet connection goes to a Linksys 16-port 10/100 switch in the basement (I have the DSL splitter outside the house, so it comes in on a separate run). That switch services the basement and 1st floor drops, then I have a cable going up along the vent stack, into the attic, and down to the 2nd floor geek room I use as a home office. In that room is an 8-port switch that I connect a wi

  • Maybe not typical (Score:3, Informative)

    by Chess_the_cat ( 653159 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @05:11PM (#12531444) Homepage
    But some of these will make you drool. [ratemynetworkdiagram.com]

  • I've been centralizing storage, lately (Score:5, Informative)

    by swillden ( 191260 ) * <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Saturday May 14, 2005 @05:17PM (#12531475) Journal

    Lots of people are listing what's on their network, so I thought I'd tell about how mine is changing, rather than what it looks like.

    The biggest change of late has been driven by my decision to move my DVD and DV video onto hard disks. That decision led me to realize that 100Mbps ethernet is Just Too Slow, so I've been upgrading to GigE. That decision has made me realize that GigE can move data from machine to machine faster than the machines get get it to or from disk, which means that there is little practical advantage to local disks anymore.

    And it turns out that there are significant advantages to *not* having much local storage. I haven't yet gone all the way to diskless, but I'm thinking about it.

    What are the advantages of centralized storage?

    • Backups are easier, because all of the important data is on one machine.
    • With a big pile of disk in one place, it makes sense to use some more advaced storage management technology. In my case there are two parts to this:
      1. RAID. By using RAID I can get higher assurance for data that I care about, and I can get really fast access to data that is less important, and various levels in between.
      2. LVM. With Logical Volume Management, I can reconfigure storage on the fly, adjusting things easily, as needed, rather than having to plan things in advance. I also get the benefit of features like snapshotting, which is an instantaneous, easy way to create mini-backups. Snapshots don't replace real backups, but they're useful to enable quick recovery from mistakes.
    • More effective use of the storage. With local storage, you always end up with one of two scenarios: Either the machine is constantly running out of space and you're having to clean it up, or you have vastly more room than you need. In my experience, I always ended up with a mix -- some machines were perpetually starved for space and others had oodles.
    • Less concern about any given machine. If a box dies, you just fix it and put the OS back on (diskless would make this even nicer). No need to figure out how to recover data, or even restore from backup, because there's nothing of any importance on the machine.

    My file server has four 200GB IDE drives, two ATA-100 and two ATA-133, each on it's own IDE controller. Each drive is carved into ten 20GB partitions. Then, each partition is joined with the corresponding partitions on the other three drives using Linux software RAID. One of these partition "sets" is mirrored -- RAID-1. On that set, a 20GB volume, I have my digital pictures and some other very important data. In order for that data to get lost, I'd have to lose all four drives. This set also gets backed up onto DVDs which are stored at my mother's house.

    Two of the sets are striped -- RAID-0 -- and then combined with LVM. That gives me 160GB of very fast storage. I can get nearly 80MBps of throughput to or from logical volumes in that set. Almost enough to fill a GigE link. I use this for scratch space when editing video and the like.

    The other seven partition sets are configured as RAID-5 volumes, then combined with LVM. This gives me 420GB of storage that can survive a single-disk failure and has moderate performance. I put DVD rips here, plus run the system itself out of this volume group.

    That's the way it's set up now. The beauty of LVM and the many-small-partitions approach is that if I decide I want it to be different later I can fairly easily move stuff around. For example, if I wanted to add more storage to the mirrored section, taking it from the RAID-5 section, I would:

    • Run "resize_reiserfs" to shrink a file system on the RAID-5 volume group.
    • Run "lvreduce" to shrink the logical volume that filesystem was on.
    • Run "pvmove" to tell LVM to move any data off of the particular RAID-5 set that I want to move.
    • Run "vgreduce" to remove the RAID-5 set.
    • Run "mdadm" twice to reconstruct the parition
    • I'm not sure if this is just the fact that I'm unlucky or what, but RAID-on-LVM has been less than stable for me. One of my disks threw an IDE error and managed to kick itself offline (the disk itself was fine, but got in a fight with the controller or something). Since there was the LVM layer the RAID layer still saw that part of the raid as active and continued trying to write to it, and as you can imagine the results were less than steller. I've gotten rid of the LVM layer and have straight RAID disk
      • sounds like you built it backwards. you are supposed to build LVM ontop of RAID, that way a single drive blowing out isn't even noticable (if you did RAID1).

      • Re:beware of raid on lvm (Score:4, Informative)

        by swillden ( 191260 ) * <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Sunday May 15, 2005 @01:50AM (#12533978) Journal

        I'm not sure if this is just the fact that I'm unlucky or what, but RAID-on-LVM has been less than stable for me.

        As Hardwyred said, you're better off reversing that and putting LVM-on-RAID. LVM expects all of its physical volumes to be present and gets very unhappy if one of them is not. Better to use RAID underneath so that what LVM sees is highly reliable volumes that work fine even when a drive kicks offline (which will happen much more often with either LVM or RAID than with just using the raw disk, since when a disk goes down Linux will try to reset it, but RAID and LVM both take that sort of failure to mean that disk is permanently offline until the sysadmin intervenes).

        That said, I also thought for a while that my LVM-on-RAID setup was unstable as hell. Every time I got the system fully functional I'd get disk failures and massive file system corruption -- I was blaming reiserfs. Eventually, though, I figured out the real problem.

        Power. As in, not enough of it. Apparently, my PSU could just *barely* run all four disks plus the CPU. Occasionally, though, it couldn't keep up. I hadn't worried about power because I'd had the four drives in an older box previously, and they had the same size PSU. I neglected to consider that a 1.3GHz Athlon draws more juice than a 500Mhz K6. Anyway, I finally installed a beefier (and much, much quieter) PSU and things have been running very smoothly ever since.

        Not that I think that has anything to do with your situation, but it was an... interesting experience.

  • Asterisk [asterisk.org] is an open sourced Linux-based Soft-PBX system. It will interface with just about any type of telephone or telephone network, including POTS, cell phones, VoIP phones, etc. Dump your answering machine for something REALLY cool!

  • A REAL Geek's Network (Score:3, Interesting)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @05:31PM (#12531554) Homepage
    You're not a geek until you have at least a few items from this checklist:

    FDDI used in home LAN
    Cabletron brand network gear
    Extreme Networks brand gear
    Rackmount Cisco network gear
    Utilizing a server that's at least 10 years old
    4+ kVA UPS
    • Fddi - Check! (and CDDI too!)
      Cabletron - Check! (Cabletron SmartCELL ZX 155mps ATM switch! SGI Indy and linux server hooked up to it)
      Extreme Networks - Nada. :(
      Rackmount Cisco - Check (2514 in third from top position in my HP 30" rack)
      10 yr old server - Check! (DEC Prioris XL dual 100mhz machine, my main server/NAT router)
      4+ kVA UPS - Almost. (Got it for free, needs new batteries)

      What's my score?
      • [FDDI, CDDI, ATM...]

        What's my score?

        Forget the score, you win!
    • What if I have only one of the items on that list ("Utilizing a server that's at least 10 years old") but several instances of it?

      And instead of the big UPS, I have several small ones plus a generator?

  • I think every geek has his own little nieche network, for example:

    • 2 x Windows XP Machines
    • 1.0ghz 12" G4 Powerbook
    • A half constructed linux server
    • Apple airport acting as router/wireless for cable modem
    • And a Amiga 600 with PCMCIA network card

    The amiga is my nieche, one day ill get apache on it!
  • Today I have:

    WRT54GS w/3rd party firmware doing QoS firewall routing.
    Netgear 8 port 10/100 switch tying in-wall cat5 runs to all bedrooms, kitchen, basement.
    WRT54G working as a WiFi bridge in kitchen.
    DLink WiFi broadband router acting as 4 port switch
    Netgear broadband router acting as 4 port switch

    Cisco ATA for Vonage

    Duron 800 backup server (mirrors and backs up my dedicated server in colo) and dnscache.
    Celeron 533 myth backend.
    Athlon XP 2100+ WinXP desktop w/printer, scanners
    Dell Latitude C600 myth fron
  • A true geek will have a flow of ideas come to him.

    When these ideas come, one should ask: "Do I really need this piece of kit?"

    A true geek would then always answer: Yes.

  • Stuff (Score:2)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) *
    • ADSL modem
    • Netgear router and wireless base station (means the network is always up, no computer needed).
    • Near silent PC for overnight downloads
    • Media PC with DTV tuner connected to TV
    • SLI PC for gaming
    • The PocketPC I'm tapping this out on
    I really want to get my C64 re-connected, but I don't have space to set it up.

  • Ooh (Score:2)

    by klui ( 457783 )
    Oh goodie, one of these "nya nya nya, mine's bigger than yours" questions.

    Hey, I have 1 computer for every room in my house, including the attic. Surf anywhere on 1GBe HW for everything. Wireless everywhere. Servers everywhere. Mine's bigger than yours. Well, I'm kidding of course.

    Anything more than 1 computer/person and it's a luxury.
  • I can't help but say that, if you have to ask, you're just a wannabe geek.
  • a) Us Robotics Router feeding DSL into the house.

    b) D-Link wireless router to reduce cabling

    c) Mac Mini as main Itunes server, feeding the

    d) Airport Express Unit hooked up to the Stereo

    e) G4 Ibook, used as main day to day machine by myself and the girlfriend

    f) Athlon 2600XP with a Gig ram and a high-end Nvidia Graphic Card running XP Pro for gaming, outside in my shed. This machine is kept 90% of the time off the net, and just being let online for updates (of games/XP/Search and Destroy, AVG).

    I

  • I am a computer geek.

    This is what is in my home:

    SMC Barricade Wireless, with printer port. Printer attached is a Deskjet 520, rescued from a dumpster. The Wireless router cost me $20 new.

    A Compaq Deskpro, 400Mhz PII with 128MB. Again, a rescue, although a new hard disk (40GB) did cost a bit.

    A DLink 80211.b to Ethernet converter. Attached to a IBM PC365 dual Pentium Pro 200, with 128MB. Which has two ethernet interfaces. The second one attached to a 750Mhz Duron with 512MB. Which in turn has external USB
    • Old IBM M-series keyboards, because they make me happy.

      Indeed -- I have three of them now, two in active use. Considering purchasing a few more (they cost more on ebay than brand-new el-cheapo keyboards in the store) in case these crap out, but I hate to think what you'd have to do to break one. I've dropped a server case on one keyboard, and dumped a full can of Coke in the other...both still working just fine. IBM really made some fine hardware back in the olden days.
  • OK, what's on/sleeping at the moment:
    • Dell Dimension Pentium4, Mandriva 2005, web server and spare mail server
    • generic Athlon/700, Mandrake 10.1, mail server and spare web server
    • generic AthlonXP 2000+, Mandriva 2005, general workstation
    • Apple PowerMac G5/1.6GHz, OS X.3, design/art station
    • TiVo series 1 stand-alone, 60GB drive, does the obvious
    • Mac SE, System 7.0, toy web server
    • LinkSys WRT54G, Sveasoft OS, wireless access
    • Dell NetPlex 486/33, Coyote Linux, router/firewall
    • JetDirect EX+3, duh... print serve
  • Wireless - supplied by Linksys Access point (running linux!)
    Apple iBook (800MHz/640megs ram)
    Dell Inspiron 7000 Laptop running Windows 2000
    DLink DSM320 providing music + video for the living room

    Wired
    Homemade Athlon Xp 2400 / 1gig memory/5x200gb disks running windows XP mostly for multimedia editing
    Ancient 233MHz Pentium MMX running Lose 98 for classic PC gaming.
    Dell Dimension - 2x500MHz Pentium III CPU, 512Megs Memory - Runs Gentoo Linux and is my main server.
    Motorola Starmax Mac Clone - running Linux - i
  • 1)
    2x WRT54G alchemy +WDS
    2)celeron BP6 dual 500, 1Gb ram, 600Gb file/webserver. gentoo.
    3)P4 2.4, 1Gb ram, winxp radeon 9800 pro 4x200 seagates
    4)P4 3.6, 1Gb ram, winxp gf6600 gt oc'd 2x120 seagates & 1x60Gb WesternDigital
    5)A7n8x barton 2500@2.5Ghz, 1Gb ram, 120Gb seagate, radeon x800
    6)soyo dragon+ xp 1600+ 768Mb ram 4x120Gb maxtor, 2x80 WD
    7)sempron 3100+@3.4Ghz epox 8kda3 1Gb ram, 160Gb WD radeon 9600(don't ask! :( )
    8)hp 1210 all-in-one printer
    9)xerox m940
    10)piles of junk computers from p3 600's to athlo
  • not a lot ;)

    Play by all means but being cheap can be expensive
    • box that does all the routing and necessary services, with three NICs: one out-facing, one to wifi, one to the core network. It's a FC1 box running dhcpd and bind, and providing routes to other nets via ipsec and cipe.
    • box that's got two nics (out-facing and core) running procmail and apache, sshd. Not a lot of local storage, it mounts home directories and apache's document-root via NFS
    • WRT45G
    • win2k terminal server, for running a few work applications (Lotus Notes, MS Office, Smart-suite)
    • Weird File
  • My home network isn't very elaborate, it's just a collection of stuff that I've found/inherited/bought.

    iBook: Panther
    Athlon XP: Linux/XP dual-boot
    P3-450: OpenBSD
    P2-33: OpenBSD
    Ultra 5: Solaris 7
    Ultra 10: Solaris 10
    Dual P-133: Solaris 8
    PWS-433: Tru64
    (4) P2-266: Soon to have OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and Darwin
    (2) PowerPC: Soon to have AIX

    There are also assorted switches, hubs, a wireless access point, etc. My next project is to pick up a PIX 501 and replace my current firewall.
  • I have plenty of weird shit that not every person wants/needs, mrtg graphs on the cisco catalyst, ospf routing, ridiculous firewalling, all ran in the name of figuring out how stuff works.

    But what I think everyone needs is simple:

    A REAL router, I like OpenBSD, but just about any unix, or a bloody cisco will work. If you can buy it as Best Buy, it is far too limited for anything even remotely entertaining, unless you plan on moding the hell out of it.

    A dhcp server, and a dns server, for most people, this

  • Boxes come and go on my home network, depending on whose systems I'm currently fixing. The fairly permanent denizens are:
    • SpeakEasy DSL terminating equipment, including VOIP terminal adapter ($85/mo for *everything*), and no need for a local analog loop. Good riddance, SBC!
    • Smoothwall box
    • Primary Windows desktop
    • Wireless router to pick up various boxes in hard-to-wire locations and the occasional guest laptop.
    • Linux server w/ big drives to hold music and test server configs (http/SMB/VNC/audio streams/et
  • Real geeks have one or more static IP addresses, and run servers from their home. =^_^=
  • The list of items on the network:

    1 Sun SparcStation 10, running Aurora Linux. Functions as DNS & DHCP server, and other small-scale tasks.

    1 Sony VAIO laptop, running Windows XP. Yeah, it's mine. I have my reasons for owning a WinXP box. (Wireless)

    1 Averatec laptop, running Windows XP. My wife's machine. (Wireless)

    2 Homebrew Athlon XP boxes, one running Fedora Core 3 (mine), the other running Windows 98SE (wife). Used for games, general purpose, etc.

    1 Sun Ultra 30, running Solaris 10. Used f
  • My home network consists of 3 systems, the one I use the most running Ubuntu Hoary, and the other two running XP Pro and Home. They're on a 100mbit network (D-Link router). The XP home system has a printer attached and shared which I can access from Linux. The desk in front of me has two monitors, keyboards, and mice so I can use my new Linux PC and old Windows PC at the same time.

    I have a wireless Linksys router on the network, which my mom connects to through her laptop and PDA. The security is pretty mi
  • in my room

    * p4 1.6 @ 2.24, 1 gig ram, 320 gigs drive - doing gaming and file storage
    * k6-2/300, 256 megs ram, 8.4 gigs drive - lin/win98 (classic gaming) dual boot.
    * pentium-m (banias) 1.5, 768 ram, 60 gigs drive - doing all the things a laptop does
    * tivo

    outside my room (housemates' gear)
    * duron 1.2, 256 megs ram, 40 gig drives
    * athlon 2200, 512, 40
    * some hp laptop with a p4 celeron
    * tivo #2
  • I have three networks at home all with different goals. They are production, work and testing.

    My work network is nothing but 2 jacks setup and segmented from everything else. When I bring my work laptop home it goes into that. I have a VPN going back to work so I can still check mail and move files where ever I am.

    Production consists of three PC's and 1 Xbox. A 1Tb (raw) file server. Movies, Back ups of xbox games etc.. A PC for the wife and my XP/Debian box. I also have a nice HP laser printer and

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