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How complex is your home network?

BarkingGhostar

BarkingGhostar

Diamond Member
I have a residential gateway that terminates the ISP Gigabit fiber connection. It is acting as a router to DHCP items directly connected to it, and through the ethernet switch connected to it. I also have one router behind the switch, and another router configured as a switch off of the first switch. And this says nothing about the mobile devices connecting through wifi of the router behind the switch.

The router behind the switch has four devices attached to it and I have several other computers, gaming consoles, streaming devices, etc. connected to the ethernet switch and directly to the gateway. This is a far cry from about 20 years ago when I had one or two computers only (pre gaming console days).
 
Modem-Wireless Router-Wired router

SU9An9M.jpg
 
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Fibre ONT -> SOHO router with custom firmware that emulates the crappy ISP provided router, while allowing pass thru. (actually I don't really need this anymore now that I don't have TV service) -> Pfsense -> 24 port switches. One is gig and the other is 10/100, daisy chained from the gig switch.

I have several vlans setup so my network is split in different vlans with various firewall rules in between to help mitigate any risks. Main vlan, wireless vlan, public wireless vlan, internet facing vlan (anything that acts as a server and requires a port be forwarded, essentially)

Also have various other vlans that arn't used a much. VM server also has a trunk port going to it so VMs can be put on different vlans. Though for security reasons I should probably have several VM servers, one per vlan, as there are ways to escape from a VM now days.



My cable management can probably use some work. 😀 It used to be worse
 
lxskllr said:
Cell phone hotspot to desktop, and sometimes laptop :^P
Click to expand...

My daughter just leased a rural apartment without wired options for internet service, and so she ended up with this same setup using her verizon line on our "unlimited" family plan. It seems to be working reasonably well for her. I didn't even know this was a possibility. 😳

Our home network starts with a cable modem directly into a main wired/wireless router. That router connects to a power line carrier that supports a couple of mini-PCs for streaming on two TVs. It also connects to a MOCA adapter that uses the house's cable network to reach another secondary wired/wireless router (configured as a remote access point) on the other side of the house. In total, I think we have six wired and nine wireless devices that normally connect to our network (and that is for two people!).

And one of these days I will start adding things to my SmartHub...
 
Cable management is such a pita. You go through the trouble of making it pretty, and it seems like you only have to move/change one thing for the whole setup to go to hell :^/
 
Not as complex as I'd like. I've been wanting to wire my home with Ethernet for a long time and put a server/rack in a closet (with a NAS) but eh.

Just my cable modem connector to my wireless router. I've got my HTPC, 360, and PS3 hard-wired into the router. I also have a ~50' Ethernet cable running upstairs to my desktop PC.
 
cable modem - pfsense vm - Nortel Baystack 5520-48-pwr - TMobile CellSpot flashed to asus merlin - belkin N750 acting as bridge
 
Mine used to be complex. modem/router for Comcast, FIOS router for FIOS, then an Asus AC68R flashed with Tomato multi-WAN, doing round-robin load-balancing between the two.
 
ISP-provided DSL modem runs to router, with a long ethernet cable running from the router to downstairs, where it plugs into a switch that has another long ethernet cable to feed the PC down there so it can get 75 megs instead of the 10 it gets on wifi. All the PCs upstairs get along fine on wifi.
Probably could have just used one really, really long cable, but I already had one long cable and the switch lying around.
 
Probably more complex than most ... old Supermicro box in the basement running pfsense/ZFS, plus a 24 port switch and UPS. I wired my house with 8 cat6 ethernet ports (1915 house, huge PITA) and then have a wifi access point sitting with everything in the basement.

If I had to do it over, would probably just stick with a nice hardware router and keep my spinning drives in my desktop. Not like anything else accesses them anyway. I'm not even sure I'd do the ethernet wiring again.
 
FIOS Quantum Router, but the actual WIFI is handled by 3 Google WIFI units on each floor (Verizon's WIFI sucks). Connected to the FIOS router is a Cisco firewall (several lab machines and servers setup behind that).

If I could ditch the FIOS router I would, but apparently you can't do stuff like setup static routes on Google WIFI, so for that one reason I still use the FIOS router.
 
Flat. One subnet, one WAP, one router, no VLANs, mostly wifi.

Work is complicated enough, no need to make life difficult at home. Especially if I've gotta troubleshoot over the phone.
 
Modem -> Router, that's it. I used to have a raspberry pi running pi hole but it wasn't very good at blocking ads.
 
Cable Modem - pfsense appliance
pfsense interface 1 - 1Gb switch - home VLAN - PCs, tablets, phones, printer, Ubiquiti AP
pfsense interface 2 - 10Gb switch - lab VLAN - ESXi hosts and QNAP SSD shared storage
 
Router, a larger port switch, and then running a airport express as separate wifi expansion in another part of the house. It's a mix and match of of wifi and wired devices.
 
Comcast modem -> Eero router -> 5 port switch connecting all the stuff by the TV wired. Everything else is either wired into an eero AP (connected to the central AP over wireless) or wireless itself.
 
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