What's in a Typical Geek Home Network?

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."

Comments

Obvious answer...

[Plac3bo]

HTPC/DVR ... MythTV

my network

[vistic]

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.

Re:my network

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

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...

Re:my network

[Stolethis]

My network is fairly small compared to the typical geek. I have a P4 running XP, a P3 on 98, a 2Wire wireless router/network manager/dsl modem, my PS2 and my PSP. I still have plenty of room to expand.

Re:my network

[vistic]

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 my Powerbook on the Mac Classic Chooser... it says the versions are incompatible (powerbook's version is too new I guess).

I also have Slackware 10.1 on my desktop... with the appletalk server daemon enabled... but I haven't tried it out yet to see if it will work with the Mac Classic.

Re:My network

[vistic]

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 programming because of .NET) and stuff like that.

My Mac OS X laptop is my primary thing I use for everyday stuff. This summer I want to try doing some coding with XCode and see if I can figure it out. I tried messing around with it on my own but I think I must be too used to C# .NET right now and will need a tutorial for XCode, Objective C, and the Cocoa APIs...

Re:my network

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

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 slot for the localtalk card!). Hopefully, not hobbled by the old machine and ancient kernel, that will start working too.

Oh, and nice taste in distros, btw.

Re:my network

[poopdeville]

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.

Re:my network

[vistic]

oh poop. :-(

Re:my network

[vought]

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?

Re:my network

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

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?

Re:my network

[tverbeek]

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

Re:my network

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I have two SE's myself, both with ethernet cards. Only 2 megs in each though, and can't be bothered to actually max them out at 4megs.

Re:my network

[tverbeek]

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 compatible with old Systems.

Re:my network

[leonbrooks]

• 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. (-:

Re:my network

[Everleet]

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 incompatible with pure AppleTalk devices.

Re:my network

[poopdeville]

Whoops, you're right. I always conflate AppleTalk and AppleShare, which lead to my confused post.

Re:my network

[vistic]

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)

Re:my network

[DJCF]

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.

Re:my network

[vistic]

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).

Re:my network

[DJCF]

As for the stylish issue, use mac-mini or a stylish mini-itx PC. Since your buying new, it won't be cheaper than the Apple tech but it will be cooler (in the geek sense), as well as more functional -- wanna streat tv to/from, use MythTV. Having friends over? A houseparty just aint a houseparty without winamp's milkdrop piped to the TV. Etc., etc., only limited by your imagination. As for power, that isn't really an arguement -- if you replace your all your lightbulbs with energy-efficient bulbs you'll save more than enough to run your setup. Me, I'm looking into self-made hydroelectic power from a stream that runs past my grandma's house to power a cheap home beowulf-cluster. But that's probably a good 5 or 10 years off from now.

Re:my network

[cyberjack88]

Can you provide a pointer to how to go about doing this? - i.e. using an old computer as a media server? TIA

Re:my network

[DJCF]

It depends on a) how old the system, b) what you want it to do, and c) what software you want to use.

If you want it to just be a video/music player/streamer install Linux, then use Samba for serving/streaming and your favorite Linux application for viewing/listening. If that's all you want it to do, I'd rather use Linux and Winamp with Milkdrop (the WORLD's best visualisation studio), or iTunes.

If you want to record or watch TV (as opposed to DVD-rips), you'll need to look into MythTV/VDR on Linux, or SageTV or its equivilents (there's a free one out there too that looks good) on Windows. You'll also need some pretty beefy hardware and a capture card.

The plus side of these setups of course is that since they are on 24/7 they can firewall/NAT your home network, and use Apache to serve your personal website.

My server right now runs NAT for my network, firewalls my network, streams music and dvd-rips to the Windows clients, and runs my Apache webserver. For this, anything over 300mhz is overkill. If that's all you want to do, look into OpenBSD as your OS -- so you can boast about your system not having a single remote exploit in over 8 years. In the not-so-distant future I want my setup to run MythTV to stream live tv to the other clients, and I'm also looking into an FM-transmitter so we can listen to it on the radios we have lying around the house.

As for connecting it to your TV and stereo, it's pretty simple: just run a sound wire from your soundcard to your stereo's external inputs. And your TV? You'll ussually need a graphics card with TV-Out, but I'm lucky -- my TV supports VGA and DVI inputs!

Ahh, the joys of running a home server.

Useless old stuff

[richie2000]

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 frame project that's 98% done and therefore not really interesting anymore that's been lying around since 2003. I really should get that 100% done and connect it...

Or you could just build a cluster to blink your Christmas lights at several GHz. ;-)

Re:Useless old stuff

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

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 those too.

Backup

[rueger]

Best thing that we ever did was take one old Pentium box, stuff it full of drives, and set up Second Copy 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....

Re:Backup

[Will Sargent]

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.

Re:Backup

[Clover_Kicker]

> Old boxes have a tendency to flake out for me.

Even if the mobo/PS dies, that doesn't hurt the data on the disks.

Re:Backup

[Will Sargent]

True, but it can take a while for me to find out that the box is dead. I'm not as careful as I should be about verifying my backups.

Re:Backup

[Clover_Kicker]

Heh.

There's no feeling quite like trying to restore your data, only to discover that the backups have been silently failing for weeks or months.

Typical Geek Home Network? No such thing.

[dougmc]

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

[BrianRaker]

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.

Re:Simple network, relatively speaking

[Glonoinha]

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 across country. Damn I miss that thing.)

As for your GigE - I doubt it is the switch throttling your throughput, more likely the hard drives. I have a cheapo Netgear 5 port GigE switch (cost like $75 last year) and it took an obscene amount of work to get my computers to serve up more throughput than it could handle. I managed to get pretty close to wire speed (like 120 MBytes/sec) but I had to go from ramdisk to ramdisk on either side of the wire.

Re:Simple network, relatively speaking

[BrianRaker]

On the GigE, I can send about 40MBi/s from the drives. My 60MBi/s is from sending data from /dev/zero on the linux system to a ramdrive on the win2k system (yay, 2gb memory). MRTG/rrdtool hasn't been too bad on reporting bandwidth use in the past in other implementations (mainly datacenter bandwidth useage). Mind you, the switch was a $50 special at Fry's about 18 months ago.

Re: old/obsolete hardware... I forgot about the IBM L40/SX that I have in the closet ^.^ Damn thing still works too. Does that count as obsolete though?

Re:Simple network, relatively speaking

[eht]

For measuring pure bandwidth, the two bests tools I've used are ttcp and iperf, both available for UNIXy and Windows, and since the source for both is available just about anything else you want.

Source code is available for iperf under GPL, and ttcp looks to have a MIT style license but I'm not sure, it's really vague, iperf is probably the better tool anyway.

Re:Simple network, relatively speaking

[forkazoo]

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 cluster. For now, I just frighten children.

Re:Simple network, relatively speaking

[forged]

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 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 have gamer friends drop by.

The one RJ45 I have second thoughts about is the one going to the circuit breaker box. Do I really need put one in there ? Otherwise it could go in the kitchen, next to the fridge. Either way I'm beginning to regret having pulled a cable so far out which may never get used. If you have better ideas or just opinions, I'm listening !

Re:Simple network, relatively speaking

[BrianRaker]

Actually, you might be able to find some passive electrical rate measuring devices for doing fancy electric use graphing or whatnot... Not that I've actually seen such a device >.> Better to future-plan anyways.

Also, here has some ideas on what to do with the cabling. It's a good idea to have too many cables run than not enough and find out later that you need a drop in a place that you had second doubts about, i.e. my former residence has three cat5e drops per one-gang box: two data, one voice. Some even had an RG-6 for cable TV.

Food for thought.

Re:Simple network, relatively speaking

[dpilot]

Does that count hardware currently not installed in a case? How about my old XT-286 and 486slc2 motherboards? How a good old SB16? How about a Hercules monographics clone, or an old AT-bus SVGA with a whopping 256k RAM, and sockets for that much more? Oldest system running - a Cyrix P150, my old server that has gotten flakey, and I finally finished migrating off of it a month or so back, but I hadn't gotten around to taking it offline, but tomight I noticed that it is comatose, again. Maybe I'll just power it off, but then the drive might get stiction.

Oh, and there's an Alpha Multia that runs, but isn't active right now. And if you're after a REAL home network, and REAL obsolete hardware, you should check out the guy who gave me the Multia. (I suspect in pursuit of domestic tranquilty and space.) He's got Alpha MP, SGI, his own AFS cell, etc, and his offline/obsolete collection is even bigger.

Re:Simple network, relatively speaking

[Jahf]

Ouch ... then count me in ... 15 or more unused RaQ / Qube stuff ... yeah ... I kept meaning to sell it.

my network

[jungd]

* 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)

my setup

[dqbiggerfam]

Mine is pretty basic.
- 2 Compaq Presario 2100 laptops(mine running xp pro and my brother's running home)
- 1 BIY tower with a 2.8(?)ghz p4 and 512 ram, 2 80 gig SATA harddrives running win server 2003 standard
- 1 cisco 800 series SOHO router with a basic configuration
- 1 HP LaserJet 1100 shared on server.

I can thank my copy of xp pro and win server 2003 to the Microsoft ELMS program and my router to the fact ta I was attending a Cisco accredited networking academy(I paid $250, not $500 for it)

I might be etiher adding a ibook or a mac mini once I have more money and a kvm switch.

in a closet far far away

[Jahf]

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!

I've got

[b00m3rang]

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 consider this a minimalist approach, they all have their uses.

I've got (more readable version)

[b00m3rang]

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 consider this a minimalist approach, they all have their uses.

mine

[astrashe]

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, one of which is just for parts, and a tp 560, which is the one I usually use because it's small and light, even though it's really slow and has a small screen.

1 old iMac, just barely fast enough to run panther. It's just to let me keep my feet wet with OS X. I used it to see what all the hoopla surrounding quicksilver was about, for example.

Various peripherals (an inkjet printer, a scanner, etc.), and a couple of external hard drives.

I've started turning down old machines -- I think it's better to use virtualization software instead of hardware whenever possible. Otherwise you have too much junk floating around.

I'd like to buy a really fast 64 bit pc, and a really nice apple desktop system, but it's hard to justify the cost.

the rack from top to bottom ...

[Triumph The Insult C]

p2 266 - openbsd/i386; authenticating gateway for a custom app
486 dx2-50 - freebsd/i386; mail (soon to go away)
p2 266 - openbsd/386; mail, lists
p2 266 - openbsd/i386; primary dns
p2 266 - openbsd/i386; secondary dns
ultra 5 - solaris 8; some java apps ... sits behind that p2 266 at the top
ss20 - openbsd/sparc w/qfe; firewall
p3 866 - openbsd/i386; cvs
p2 466 - nt4/386; exchange (don't know why this is still there)
p3 1ghz - freebsd/i386; www
p4 2.6ghz - freebsd/i386; mythtv

outside of the rack ...
p3 866 - openbsd/i386, xp; desktop
soekris 4801 - openbsd/i386; wireless ap, vpn gw
p3 1.2ghz - openbsd/i386, freebsd/i386, xp; laptop
ibook g4 - osx; roommate's girlfriend's laptop
2 playstations (one old with the network adapter and one new one)

Re:the rack from top to bottom ...

[raju1kabir]

p2 266 - openbsd/i386; authenticating gateway for a custom app
486 dx2-50 - freebsd/i386; mail (soon to go away)
p2 266 - openbsd/386; mail, lists
p2 266 - openbsd/i386; primary dns
p2 266 - openbsd/i386; secondary dns
ultra 5 - solaris 8; some java apps ... sits behind that p2 266 at the top
ss20 - openbsd/sparc w/qfe; firewall
p3 866 - openbsd/i386; cvs
p2 466 - nt4/386; exchange (don't know why this is still there)
p3 1ghz - freebsd/i386; www
p4 2.6ghz - freebsd/i386; mythtv

That's an awful lot of electricity, isn't it? For $600 you could get a machine powerful enough to take on almost everything those machines are doing. It'd pay for itself pretty quickly.

Re:the rack from top to bottom ...

[Triumph The Insult C]

and for $600, i could get one machine that can fail and everything would stop working =)

that said, i am in the middle of replacing most of the machines. they are getting old. the new machines are much more power friendly

X10

[cloudspot]

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

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

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 shit. And that's about it.

You can't even get the things for ceiling fans. There are a few hobbyist hacks out there... and I was just thinking about one of my own. But I really want to still be able to pull the chain to turn it on and off too. Can't find anything that does this, for any price.

We really need a better home automation protocol.

Re:X10

[raju1kabir]

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.

The only thing I ever found it "useful" for was shelling into the linux box over wifi and turning lights on and off to confuse guests.

Re:X10

[nft]

while it won't solve your fan chain problem, smarthome's new insteon technology look promising. It's got 900mhz wireless for 150', plus powerline signaling and x10 backwards compatability.

Re:X10

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I don't need wireless... I've got wires running to these things, I'm willing to try more. I don't need another wireless protocol crowding out the RF in my house.

The usual VAX stuff...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have about five 4000 series VAX systems, a couple of 3000 desktop VAX systems, two PDP-11/34a systems.
And one Intel machine to do DECNET-to-TCP/IP translation for getting out on the Internet.
So, basically, a completely normal environment...

Re:The usual VAX stuff...

[afd8856]

So it's because of you slashdot has not evolved from html 3.2...

Re:The usual VAX stuff...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

As long as we're all bragging, I have a PDP-11/04 that I'm trying to restore and a Vaxstation 4000. My Alpha machine is just a little crappy Multia, that I don't have a copy of Tru64 for.

Oh, and the DECstation? Still need a copy of ultrix/digital unix.

Damn. OS's are hard to come by, thinking about it... I even need irix for my Indy.

Re:The usual VAX stuff...

[Ezdaloth]

Go for the 4000's Alpha's, those you can actually still put to good use. And who wants systems with less then 36 64bit PCI slots anyways?

My network

[Glonoinha]

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 nice keyboard, mouse, and 18" LCD, two laptops and an iPaq coming in via Wifi, and two more desktops. The cluster is my primary environment and is used for everything - one machine is for playing with different distros of Linux (SuSE 9.2 Pro right now), one is my 'file server', one is for gaming and one is for 'other' meaning where I run all my VMware virtual machines for playing with different things like client server application development, MQseries, WebSphere environments, playing with database environments, burning CD's / DVD's etc.

The most important thing about a geek's home system is that he has some hardware that he can experiment with, and some hardware that is stable - generally not something you can maintain all on a single machine.

19" rack, shuttle ..

[torpor]

powerbook
dell laptop
shuttle (running linux)
i-opener (linux)
zaurus (linux)
custom hardware putting a 12U 19" rack full of embedded systems running their own .. well .. anyway .. the whole rack is on the 'net..
oh, and my ipod (linux)

Typical Geek Home Network? No such thing-Scanner.

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn! Looked through them all. Not one has a networked scanner, or wireless modem (56K).*

*I also keep an ethernet modem as backup.

My Apt

[BSDevil]

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 (larger) Portege that sits on the table in front of the TV, and dosen't get used for all that much besides checking TVGuide.com

All hooked together (wired and wirelessly) through a stock WRT54G, and connected to the 2 old Laserjets in the TV room (only one of which works at any given time). Plus another pair of old 486 laptops in the closet which don't get used.

Mine

[Utopia]

Desktop:
XP Media Cender 2005 P4 2.8GHz 2GB

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

Nothing Special

[Suddenly_Dead]

1 Linksys Router
2 Desktop PCs (one with XP, one with XP and Linux)
1 Xbox (Xbox Live, Xbox Media Center, etc.)

As for typical, there is no typical. Geeks are all pretty different (products of which include the insane number of Linux distros).

one laptop

[mlc]

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?

Re:one laptop

[Glonoinha]

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.

Re:one laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

Need or want?
I could survive using my PII ToughBook, which is fine for wireless surfing, but I enjoy having a variety of systems on which I learn.

Simplify, grasshopper

[Gothmolly]

Say you have an old P5 machine with some big HDs in it that you use as a server. Dump it, put the drives into external USB cases, and sneakernet the backups. Do you really need a whole box sucking up space, juice and cooling?
You don't need a *nix firewall, so dump that, and free yourself from kernel tweaking, 'emerge all', 'build world' and all that jazz whenever you score a new wireless network adapter for it. Get a $29 wireless CompUSA brand router, and be done with it.
You don't really need a local caching DNS server.
You don't really need a local SMTP server.
Ditto for Squid.
Your domain, which you bootleg onto your cable connection, and maintain DNS with a bunch of Perl scripts and DynDNS.org - host it on a virtual server somewhere for $9 a month, and you can unplug even more things.
We have 2 PCs - XP and 2000, a wireless router/4port-hub, and a printer hooked to a jetdirect. Even the scanner sits on a shelf until needed.

Do you do so much hacking at home that you really NEED a cluster under your desk? That old Ultra1 you got from the dumpster at work... guess what, its not useful.

Simplify, my son. The path to TRUE wisdom is knowing what you need, and not one piece of cruft more.

Re:Simplify, grasshopper

[HeelToe]

I am on a simplifying mission this weekend, but I have to disagree with the local caching dns server.

Comcast has fucked up too many times to trust their dns anymore. I've been running djbdns dnscache for years and recently moved - I decided to trust my isp's dns again. Two days later, their huge failure. Keep the dns cache.

Re:Simplify, grasshopper

[Bob MacSlack]

But then we'd have to find another way to compensate for our small anatomy!

Re:Simplify, grasshopper

[Anonymous Coward]

Just point at real DNS servers - 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2. Genuity never goes down :)

Re:Simplify, grasshopper

[rabbit994]

Earthlink, Grandpa, which their DNS has gone down, gotten really slow or has the world's longest TTL values so a local caching server is great. Some of us also use our personal domains to screw around with and if you get a static IP for 2 dollars more, don't have to worry about those perl scripts for DynDNS. I have p4 2.0 GHZ running Windows XP for gaming, email *thunderbird* and web browsing *firefox* and another p1.6 GHZ running Windows 2003 Enterprise for DNS, Mail (hmailserver) and IIS 6 (yep, I use IIS, who cares)

It works for me and my uptime with Windows has been most impressive. (for windows anyways)

Re:Simplify, grasshopper

[Gothmolly]

Why do we care what mail client or webserver you use?
Rice is not the solution to everything. You're illustrating my point - more is not always more.
Just use decent DNS servers, like the AC above has mentioned.

Re:Simplify, grasshopper

[rabbit994]

I do, I also like keep it around to test it. I've moved most of my hosting to my dedicated Windows 2003 box at Servermatrix. Some people trick out their cares simply because they want to see if they can. I screw with Windows 2003 to see if I can.

Sigh

[Ratbert42]

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 OpenBSD firewall, a Linux fileserver, a pair of DNS/email/web hosts, etc. but the management time and the heat just wasn't worth it.

The List

[Ed Almos]

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

Gigabit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gigabit ethernet, with a gigabit switch capable of handling jumbo frames.

Lots of stuff...

[Anonymous Coward]

Workstations:
Primary Mac: Dual G5/2.5GHz
Primary PC: home-built Athlon 2600XP

Miscellaneous:
TiVo (first-generation, upgraded with a 120GB drive, ethernet, and web interface)

Servers:
G3-upgraded Power Mac 7600, providing mail, web, DNS, routing and firewall services.
G4-upgraded Power Mac 7600, running all manner of home control/monitoring software (like XTension, MacCallerID, etc)
Cobalt Qube 2, running mail & web service for a friend's domain.

As soon as Tiger matures a little, the two 7600s are going to be replaced by a Dual G4/450MHz running Tiger Server and a Mac mini running Tiger Client, respectively. Once I get up to speed on Tiger Server I may even give the dual G4 the duties the Qube is performing and put the Qube back on eBay from whence it came.

Down in the basement on a separate network, I've got a test bench with a couple lower-spec PCs, another dual G4/450Mhz and two iMac DVs. I use that to test OS builds and deployment and all kinds of other stuff.

Geek street...

[jskline]

Some of my system consist of a live webserver affectionately named "The server down by the dryer", another box providing super feats as a firewall (IPCop), and yet another providing our "jukebox" for serving up MP3's and such to our LAN (browse and play at will) which is running under BEOS.

We also had (until it was recently stolen from my home by one of my kids friends) a machine dedicated to video media; aka Snapstream. I had this thing set up to record and store stuff on it's 200 gig hard drive, and you could access it's interface and programmability via a web browser interface. It could directly record from either off-air, or could address my Dish Network box including controlling the channels. Had it secured from the outside and all. Was pretty nice. I miss all those high resolution Mpeg recordings that could be watched on my laptop where ever... (bummed)

All in all, 4 workstation computers (PC), and 2 laptops (PC). Yea, I installed a wireless access point up in the attic and it covers up to about 2 houses away, but is secured. And obviously the usual fare of media devices and interfaces to the wired side of our LAN.

Wish I still owned a Mac.. oh well, again someday when I'm gainfully employed again.

Re:Geek street...

[Anonymous Coward]

We also had (until it was recently stolen from my home by one of my kids friends) a machine dedicated to video media ... (bummed)

If you're so bummed, find out which kid it was and have your kid beat the shit out of him repeatedly until it is returned. Or have him arrested and press charges, or something.

Re:Geek street...

[jskline]

I guess I forgot to mention the distributed switches in the house (can get by with cheap quality cat-5e), and even our X-Box is networked.

Also 4 printers, 2 inkjet, 1 laser, and 1 dot matrix (for invoicing)

If your into Midi Machine Control stuff, I have 3 devices in my studio that can be controlled from my laptop via MIDI (I'm a musician but thats another topic) :-)

Re:Geek street...

[jskline]

I'm not quite that mean and desparate. I can rest securely on the knowledge that this kid will ultimately get it in the end.

Besides, all the boards, drives, ect, all have my name and such scribed into them. The police are watching and if any of it shows up on various markets, it can be traced back.

Additionally, my suspicions are that my 16 year old step-daughter was probably partly culpable in this. I'm letting the police figure it out.

In the mean time, once I can get my income stablized, I'll probably order a new Dell Dimension or something such, and populate the thing again with dual TV cards again. I also have a spare IR Emitter device for the Dish box. And I still own my licenses to Snapstream/BeyondTV, so I can reload it again.

Re:Geek street...

[MentalMooMan]

How the hell did a kid get away with a machine like that? Wouldn't you notice pretty soon and get it back? What's the full story?

Re:Geek street...

[Bake]

eh...?

Pardon me for asking, but how the hell do you expect the kid who stole it to "get it" in the end if the he isn't held responsible for the theft and punished accordingly?

The only thing you're teaching this kid is that it's OK to steal if you get away with it!

Re:Geek street...

[jskline]

All I'll say is to sit down and think about it a while. Think about the laws of reciprocity. I might mention that I'm a believer in faith and God, and one of the things we're taught is to let this kind of thing go as the perp will get theirs in the end 10 fold, and I; the victim will get mine 10 fold in the end.

I bet that probably means a whopper of an even better machine or.. machine(s)... :-)

I'm not teaching anyone anything. Thefts go on all the time. The kid(s) that did this will ultimately get caught and have to do some time. Remember that this kind of thing only escalates. They figure hay I got away with this; how much more can I do and get away with. So; like I said, it will eventually catch up to them.

Re:Geek street...

[jskline]

In a nutshell;

I had to leave town for two weeks and go to Indiana. I was getting some "training" for a temp job that I was doing. I had not programmed anything on the unit so it was shut down while I was gone. This way if any thunderstorms came through, my wife wouldn't have to race through the house unplugging everything. I left up only what was used and she knew how to turn off or on.

Sometime while my wife was out of the house; probably at church on one of the Sunday's, is when we suspect the machine developed legs and left. My 16 year old stepdaughter has an 18 year old boyfriend that comes around every so often. This all against my better wishes, but I'm only step-dad.

The boyfriend is unemployed, and didn't finish high school and everyone is thinking he's the prime suspect. Fortunately we don't have issue with drugs in the house, nor with the boyfriend... (I know, I've looked and I've researched. They're clean). The boy is not allowed in the house, however when nobody's home, and the step-daughter is in the rebellion period, she doesn't go to church... so... you can kind of put the pieces of the puzzle together here.

We all suspect that they've canabalized the box, and gotten rid of the case. Routine checks of pawn shops, and small-build shops turned up nothing. The boyfriend is a hard-core gamer, and probably has no use for the special cards in the machine. We think they only wanted a fast game machine. They're currently trying to find where he is staying since he has no "official" address so they can serve a search warrant. He's suspect in some other trivial crimes in the community.

I am watching Ebay looking for any telltale signs of my Hauppauge's from it, or the twin Midiman Delta 1010's that were in the machine as well. Don't think they'd know what to do with those as they left the breakout boxes behind when they took the machine.

Re:Geek street...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Yes, because most people only learn lessons after being raped by Bubba in Prison, or Plaintiff's counsel in the courtroom.

Let's financially ruin the guy, after all, the MPAA was financially ruined too!

Re:Geek street...

[Bake]

So, let me get this straight ...

Instead of saying "Busted!" and punish accordingly (since this is a kid, I'd say returning the stolen item, a written apology and a couple of weeks of being grounded would be punishment enough) you would rather let the kid get away with it, and possibly pursue a career of crime in the faint hope that the kid will IN THE END think "hey, you know ... maybe stealing isn't such a good idea after all".

I don't know about you, but I'd rather skip my 10 fold of goodness in the end than let the kid get his 10 fold of evil in the end, when I can easily prevent it, as in this case.

What if the kid was stealing this to finance a drug habit? Wouldn't it be smarter to spot that in the early stages? Or would you rather wait until the kid ends up in the gutter?

Evil habits such as this one are only broken in the early stages. If unbroken, they will only grow stronger and stronger and harder to break.

Now, I don't know of what faith you may or may not be, but it always makes me sad when people use faith to excuse their bad choices, choices that could very well save lives in the end.

Re:Geek street...

[jskline]

I guess the root question got lost in the mess.

From a law enforcement perspective, unless you have physical and tangible proof, you cannot "bust". You must first prove your case before you arrest.

Its a slow cog, but it's a cog that will turn a full 360 eventually.

Cheers

Re:Geek street...

[Bake]

Who said anything about Bubba in the federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison?

Confront the kid! Confront the kid's parents! Do Something! Whatever you do, don't do nothing at all!

There's more to punishment than prison or filing charges.

Like other cancers of society, the habit of stealing is best broken early on. Otherwise it will spread.

Re:Geek street...

[ScottSpeaks!]

All I'll say is to sit down and think about it a while. Think about the laws of reciprocity. I might mention that I'm a believer in faith and God, and one of the things we're taught is to let this kind of thing go as the perp will get theirs in the end 10 fold, and I; the victim will get mine 10 fold in the end.

If you're talking about the afterlife or karma... maybe. But...

I bet that probably means a whopper of an even better machine or.. machine(s)... :-)

Apparently you're one of the delusional fools who believe - despite ample evidence to the contrary - that this kind of justice is meted out in this life, and people who've been wronged inevitably get good things from God, and that evil people always end up getting caught. No intelligent person over the age of 12 buys that. I mean really. You aren't that bloody naive... are you?

I'm not teaching anyone anything.

Yeah, that would require you having some wisdom to teach.

Thefts go on all the time. The kid(s) that did this will ultimately get caught and have to do some time. Remember that this kind of thing only escalates. They figure hay I got away with this; how much more can I do and get away with. So; like I said, it will eventually catch up to them.

Oh, so your plan is, rather than helping to prevent him from straying off the path of righteousness, you're going to just let him go and get in way over his head, and then gloat when he fucks over someone else so badly that he finally gets fucked over himself. That is so pathetically irresponsible. Those of us who've been around the block more than a dozen times are morally obligated to provide guidance for those with less experience. Those who turn away without doing that... well, you've heard of the "law of reciprocity"?

Re:Geek street...

[jskline]

Hmmm... another that may not have read.

We already checked for drug problems. Found none. We're not in that kind of neighborhood.

As to dealing with the kid(s). I cannot morally, ethically or LEGALLY go after either child unless there is physical proof. Then if I had the proof, I am required by law to go through the process with them about it.

Fact is we don't know where any of the computer parts are, nor the computer as a whole. We do know that they are the "Most likely suspects" in the machines disappearance, and they've developed timelines for when the machine left the house. We just cannot say conclusively who definately took the hardware. The police ARE investigating but no news.

I can only do, what I'm allowed by law to do.

Re:Geek street...

[frooddude]

We're not in that kind of neighborhood is BS.

Major distribution chains may require a certain "type of neighborhood" but you're fooling yourself if you think that where you live has anything to do with the local availability of drugs of ANY type. Besides, there's always that whole fun degrees of seperation, you're only just so far away from knowing the right person.

What I'm dying to know is this: how did your kids friend get out of the house with it? Without your kid knowing? There's not a thing that went down in my parents house when I was a teen that I wasn't either privy or party to. This includes the whack shit my parents did.

Re:Geek street...

[jskline]

We are fairly sure my 16 year old knows full well who got it as we believe that she participcated. Since my 16 year old also recently got busted for kyping a CD from a local Wal-Mart, we know that she's not above doing this sort of thing. The both of them have been with others who have been doing trivial crimes such as busting mailbox doors, and breaking car windows. (They had to go testify against the people that did the actual damage). We know whats going on. I just can't go off and do stuff without a firm legal ground to do it.

Re:Geek street...

[EdelFactor19]

i'd say either you are a horrid parent, lack common sense, or are just an asshat disguised as a geek.. for god sakes get a handle on your kids.. if you know your daughter was involved do something about it. You dont need the police's OK to ground her indefinately, or to speak to the other persons parents. How is it that you are able to afford such luxuries for computers, while out of work, and while your daughter is compelled to steal, and of all places from walmart.... and saying that your neighborhood isnt a drug neighborhood is THE single most proposterous thing you could ever say. I suggest you spend a little less time on your computer and a little more time on planet earth.

Re:Geek street...

[jskline]

First off...

Sorry. we are good parents. Since we do not have drug problem, that right there is major hurdle and success since step-kid turns 17 in July. In fact, because of community involvement and our families participation in these programs, yea, I can say that our community is very very low amount of drug use!! We have stats to prove it! Research Columbia Heights/Hilltop MN and you can find out!

We already have spoken with all involved parents about issue(s), and all parents have been in touch with police, investigators, etc.

In Minnesota, if the government even gets a moniker of a hint that you spanked or mentally abused your kid in any way, they can come in and take all your kids away for as much as a year while they sort out your parenting skills. Government intervention at it's most extreme! It's not a very family friendly place here at all of late, but we'll eventually get rid of the liberals that put these laws on the books in the first place. But right now, there is only so much one can do to or with your own kid(s).

As to how your asking if I can afford a new computer; it is part smart economic survival planning on my part, and the fact that I'm working temp and part time jobs, and occasionally some contract jobs while I search and wait for permenant digs. Plus, my new machine will be partially funded by money directly from my 16 year old's savings account!

Gads... You guys got to get off the soap boxes. We're all different people, not cookie-cut robots following some fixed doctrine. Lighten up! :-)

Re:Geek street...

[EdelFactor19]

im not saying that you cant afford a computer (and I was not referring to a new computer, but rather to this fancy box that was stolen) clearly to anyone who frequents this site, having a computer is a neccesity, I'm just surprised that while you are busy putting together what many would consider a "luxury box" to do all sorts of fancy stuff, your daughter feels that she has to steal cds. which i consider ironic does she lack the money because she wastes hers, or does she just steal to steal? granted with things she has done its understandable that she has a very small amount of spending money; but in some regard its like seeing your father buy a bmw and then tell you sorry hun, moneys tight right now while im out of work and youll just have to go with out a cd.... again im not implying that that is your case, but when you are busy going on about all of your gear its hard not for you to come across like that thats what i was trying to get at. Although If i was unemployed the last thing i would be doing is building such a system and tying up my money.. after all if shes 17 college cant be too far off, and not to be a cynic or in anyway reflect on your personal situation, but one never knows when employment will come again in this silly economy. and while its great that shes still drug free.. if shes just turning 17, the ordeal is just beginning and again i only wish you the best of luck. but the reality i have seen is that no matter where you go, the more you think there isnt a drug presence the more likely it is there... but in your case i hope i'm wrong.. have a good one

Now and Future

[esme]

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 machine to do backups

-esme

It's not really my network at the moment...

[WeblionX]

Right now:
4: laptops (Family members)
1: desktop
1: server
2: laptops (One for coding, other I'm trying to fix)

What I plan to have when I get my own network:
1: Desktop
1: Server
1: HTPC

I figure those three are about all I need. The server would really be backup, webserving, file serving, and various other server-like tasks (Perhaps a game server from time to time). Not really geeky, but you don't need much more than that.

If you really don't want to get rid of excess computers, I'd suggest getting a rack or cabinet of some kind, tossing them in, and have one large BOINC system.

Home network?

[Pegasus]

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, some more "normal" machines all over the house.

Electricity bill? Dont ask... At least that room doesn't need heating during the winter :)

no linux box your network...

[Elivs]

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 wall. (eg- linus, bsd demon etc).
7) 5 points if the poster is an autographed poster of RMS.
7) 1 point for each "light saber" or "one ring"
8) 1 point for having a "ssh" client on your cell phone.
9) 1 point for every 5 windows boxes.
10) -3 points for having a girlfriend. (unless said girlfriend preferes CLI over GUIs, or has an opinion on the vi/emacs debate)
11) 1 point/kg of unused cables or other computer parts that you have keep "just in case"
12) 2 points for posting on slashdot on saturday night asking what consitutes a geek network!

Elivs

Re:no linux box your network...

[oZt]

Ok, I get a total of ... 1(unstable)+1(unstable)+1(5 win)+3(maybe more than 3 kg)+2(is there something else to do on a saturday night?) = 8 I guess 8 isn't that good. Though I would be rather happy with 5pts + gf.

Re:no linux box your network...

[jskline]

hehe...

I actually have a machine without a cover! Then, I also have a poster from the old Linux Online thing.

I have the Wife 2.0 which I believe supercedes Girlfriend 6.0, especially since Wife 2.0's inception date was well over 15 years ago, and has become quite stable :-)

I have literally a 14lb box full of cables... hmmm pounds to kilograms....

LOL..

Re:no linux box your network...

[kv9]

10) -3 points for having a girlfriend. (unless said girlfriend preferes CLI over GUIs, or has an opinion on the vi/emacs debate)

13) -5 points for reffering to ones SO as gf/bf

Re:no linux box your network...

[frooddude]

Hmmm,
+1(debian/unstable)
+1 (5 windows machines, not always on however)
-6 pts, wife == gf*2
+3 pts, spawned a new geek, 16mo and he can't stay away from a powered up computer
+25? good lord, why do useless cables count so much?

How about other points?
1+TB storage +1 pt
Raided! +1pt
>90% used +2 pt
>90% regularly accessed +3pt
>10k digital photos ?pt
wife uses her laptop daily +1pt
wife uses it productively +1pt
(recipes, correspondence, personal interest research aka: hobbies)

OT: tips on wiring a house with ethernet?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to wire the house with ethernet, but I don't know where to start. First of all I want to connect the upstairs and downstairs with so I can connect to the machines upstairs without using Wifi. I'd like to use conduits so I can add more cables later.

I also want set up a small LAN in the crawlspace with a camera, lamp, environmental monitoring, sump-pump monitoring. We have a lot of problems down there. It's very humid, so what would be a good way to seal it off from the rest of the house and/or protect the equipment down there (I'm thinking a soekris board and weather duck, something like that).

I can probably bang all this out myself but wondering if there was a site with tips.

Upgraded some stuff yesterday...

[vought]

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 Tiger respectively, while the PCs are both running Winddows 2k. Of course, we have to tie all this stuff into the Internet, so here's what we use:

-Comcast Internet (which sucks on a regular basis...)
-A 3Com LinkSwitch 1000 24-port 10/100 switch ($4k in -1996...$15.99 yesterday at Discount Computer)
-Apple Airport Base station in hub mode for the laptops...
-A "router card" four-port ethernet card in the PC. It came with nifty software that allows me to set up the PC as a router and use the other ethernet card for the Internet.

Total cost for everything...you don't want to ask. The G5 was a gift, the IBM desktop and laptop were bought for pennies on the dollar at Metricom's employee bankruptcy sale (you only get a week of severance, but we'll sell you this $2k laptop for $150!), the PowerBook was bought through Apple's employee sale, and the 10/100 switch was $16.00. I guess it all cost about $3k or so.

Here's how my home is geeked out

[jht]

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 wired run into the master bedroom (for my wife's iMac), and in my room it connects the computers and a Linksys WAP54G that's hooked up to a booster antenna.

Then, for the networked devices themselves, my wife has a work laptop (Win2K) that she keeps in the basement most of the time. My preschooler has an iMac DV (G3, 450 MHz) that he uses to play games - it's wireless. There's also a TiVo Series 2 with a Linksys wireless USB adapter. Upstairs is where most of the gear is - my iMac G4 (1.25), my wife's iMac G4, a Dell Dimension 4600 that's been upgraded and tweaked for gaming and XP MCE, and both a networked laser printer and an Epson inkjet. I've got a small collection of handhelds (Palm Tungsten T, HP iPaq 1930, Zaurus 5500, and a Newton 2100), and there's a Shuttle SFF Celeron box in the basement running ClarkConnect Office Edition as the web and e-mail server for the house. Plus I bring my PowerBook G4 home from the office a lot.

For systems currently not in service, I have a Mini-ITX fanless box that I was running the old Mitel SME Server on at one point, and a Netpliance i-Opener (an obsolete "Internet-in-a-box" machine), that has been hacked into a decent low-end PC, with a small hard drive and a faster processor (and a re-flashed BIOS). That used to be in our living room at one point. I keep a lot of miscellaneous gear in the house, both functional and non-functional - you never know when you might need something and I rent a small office in the next town for my business, so I don't have the storage space there.

About once a year, I pile all the stuff that's been untouched for a year into the van and head down for the MIT flea, hoping to sell off some of it to free up space and recover a little cash. My most entertaining sale I ever made at one of them? Andy Ihnatko bought my spare java Ring at a flea a couple of years ago. They'd sent me two when I ordered the eval kit back then. I still wear mine on occasion, and it's the geekiest thing I own, bar none.

The basement where my server lives is also the home of my workshop - I do occasional electronics stuff down there and bicycle repair work - I own two bikes (a road bike and a mountain bike) and ride a few times a week. That, golf, and my family are the token non-geek things in my world.

Maybe not typical

[Chess_the_cat]

But some of these will make you drool.

Lots of stuff and a big electric bill to boot!

[DenniRuz]

--No name Celeron firewall running IPCop
--IBM Thinkpad a22m w/ Arch Linux
--Dell 1750 running Gentoo doing Samba, Myth Server, Amanda Server (w/ lto 1 tape drive), apache/php, and a recipe database (mysql)
--DIY in an Antec Aria as a Myth FE running Gentoo.
--Toshiba ct3015 in the kitchen w/ freebsd running a front end for the recipe database
--2 'Floater' desktop systems
--1 'Floater' Laptop
--Linksys G wap w/ sveasoft 'Freya' firmware.
--Tying everything together is a Extreme Networks Summit24 10/100 switch (w/ 1g to the server).
--Strictly speaking not in the house, but connected through wireless-- a 'dash pc' in my car.

The server can deal w/ lots more, so soon I'll be integrating a video alarm system and some home automation.

I think that's it.

--Dennis

I've been centralizing storage, lately

[swillden]

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

VoIP server!

[Helix150]

Asterisk 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

[green pizza]

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

Re:A REAL Geek's Network

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

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?

Re:A REAL Geek's Network

[Supernoma]

I have a Prioris MX myself, (dual 200's).

Do you know if there is a way to make it so you don't have to press F1 for the system to boot with a keyboard plugged in? (it doesn't require it when there isn't one but I need it).

Re:A REAL Geek's Network

[tverbeek]

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?

Re:A REAL Geek's Network

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I think you have to find that stupid DEC config floppy image, and run the config, the regular bios screen only has about half of the options it has.

Re:A REAL Geek's Network

[green pizza]

[FDDI, CDDI, ATM...]

What's my score?

Forget the score, you win!

Re:A REAL Geek's Network

[Ezdaloth]

I think you're still missing out on exotic CPU's and systems. Add like system older then you, or a highend unix server. Any real geek should own a personal piece of computer history like an highend Alpha or an old Vax.

Re:A REAL Geek's Network

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Vax - Check! (Vaxstation 4000)
Highend Alpha - Nada. :( (Crappy little Multia not in working order, is all I have.)
Exotic CPUs - Check! (MIPS, Sparc, POWER, Clipper)
Ancient system - Almost. PDP-11/04 (If it's one of the first 04's then I would have been 1 yr old when it was made. I lost out on my chance at a HP F series 1000, a 1960s computer... the company would rather trash it, than give it away.)

What's my score?

Re:A REAL Geek's Network

[Anonymous Coward]

a real geek is to paranoid to let up what's behind his firewall.... just incase somebody traces him back, has the skill to get root on all the many and varied systems he's running, and then he'll end up the laughingstock of his LUG....

Re:A REAL Geek's Network

[bunnyman]

The one thing all those items have in common is that they cost more than they are worth.

Geeky network

[Komarosu]

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!

I'm simplifying ...

[HeelToe]

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 frontend.
Wife's Mac Powerbook (wifi)
Mac mini
Work Mac Powerbook
Work P4 with win2k server, deb unstable, many vmware guests for development

I'm currently working on converting the Athlon XP2100+ to handle:
mythfrontend in HT, mythbackend (lvm disks), colo server backup, dnscache, mpd.

Work P4 will be used for games on off-hours.

Mac mini will handle scanning and printing.

It will be nice to turn off those two older boxes and the Dell Latitude- power bill is too high.

The Dell Latitude will come alive again at some point when I figure out how to mount its screen recessed into a counter for kitchen web browsing, recipe lookup, and control of mpd that feeds HT amp with multi-room source output to multiple amps and speakers around the home.

Simple Solution

[DjReagan]

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.

Wow

[Lord Kano]

My network topology is currently changing.

Currently, I have 3 WinXP desktops(two using wireless), a WinXP Laptop(using wireless), two Mandrake Linux machines(one a Duron 700 and the other a G3 PPC, one Mac OS 8.1 machine. I recently bought a Sun Ray 1 thin client and have been looking for a use for it. I also have several older machines that I have no current use for.

LK

Stuff

[Kris_J]

• 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

[klui]

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.

Re:Ooh

[tverbeek]

Oh goodie, one of these "nya nya nya, mine's bigger than yours" questions.

Au contraire! I'm sure mine isn't nearly as big as others', but what I can do with it is pretty amazing (IMHO). That's what really matters.

Wow.... um...

[Atlantis-Rising]

Well, for starters, I've got my main machine; 3.2 Ghz Xeon, 1 GB RAM, 2x GbE, 40 GB SATA, 128 MB PCI-Express graphics. A handful of laptops (3), Athlons from 2100 through to 3000+, A larger handful of desktops, everything from a PIII 1.0 GHz to Athlon 2600+ to PIV 2.8s. (We've got about twelve of those.) Roles? VPN/ISA/Router, Asterisk server, file servers, streaming media servers, Windows MCE servers... everything a geek could ask for. GbE backbone, with wireless- everything using IPSEC, of course, and AES WPA.

What I got...

[zaddikim]

Hmmm...

• -Compaq Deskpro 866, 320MB RAM, 140GB between 3 HD's, dualboot Win2k and Mandrake 10.1, three monitors connected (listed separately)

• -Apple Mac SE, 1MB(!), System 7, works (noisily), not networked. Looking for an appletalk bridge to amaze and disgust my friends

• - Whitebox Celery 500, not currently running , and prefers linux to windows when it does (not that I can blame it)

• - Lexmark Optra E312 ($20 at an auction!), works like a charm

• - 19" & 15" generic PC monitors to main box

• - 2 Mac monitors, one working, one not ( flyback issues). The working one is attached to main box (@ 1600x1200 no less!. Both picked up at auction for $5.

• - 10/100 switch, hacked into an old SCSI eclosure with the SCSI PSU providing power

• - 10MB hub for back up

• - Linksys router/switch for backup (on landlords' router)

• - ~100 lbs of miscellaneous hardware in rubbermaid boxes. Most of it should be thrown out, but you know how it goes... you'll need that old ISA NIC to fix a friends ancient fileserver about a week after you trash the boxes.

Saving for a Mac Mini to hook up to the other Mac monitor once I adjust it. The Gyration wireless keyboard/mouse combo will go nicely with it... :-)

Scenewhore much?

[RomulusNR]

I can't help but say that, if you have to ask, you're just a wannabe geek.

A router for every machine!

[Wespionage]

Well, not quite, but I have a very simple network by most standards. A couple of Macs (one connected via ethernet and one wireless), a couple of Windows laptops (both wireless), and a couple of TiVos (one wired, one wireless).

However, I have 3 routers here to support my services.

I originally had a Linksys wireless router, but then signed up with Verizon's FIOS service. Well, the bandwidth was terrible with the Linksys router. Putting a D-Link broadband router in there solved the speed problems. However, the "free" with the service D-Link router provided by Verizon had no wireless capabilities, so I had to keep the Linksys wireless router as well. I just haven't yet tried to replace it with, presumably, a D-Link wireless router.

Then I signed on with Vonage. Well, Vonage has one option -- take a router (containing all the super-secret settings for my VoIP service).

I'm going to have to figure out some design for my tower of routers that I'm acquiring...

Mixed Network

[Noodlenose]

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 thought about a OpenBSD machine to use as Mailserver/DNS/Fileserver/Firewall, but .Mac really makes that unnecessary and the Macs behind the router's firewall are pretty safe as well.

All of that in rural New Zealand. Heaven!

NN

Re:Typical Geek Home Network? No such thing.

[jbplou]

I like to add a FreeBSD machine in command line full screen continously performing GREPs so the screen is scrolling with text and tell people who come over it is doing something important.

Minimalism baby

[bonezed]

I am slowly getting my network down to 3 or 4 systems.

currently running i have:
mini-itx server - slackware
p3 600 lappie - slackware
shuttle SN45g - winXP (17" lcd attached)
wrt54gs - openwrt
cheap 16 port rackmount 10/100 switch

plenty of old stuff in the cupboard that will run if power is applied

Interesting Question

[ratboy666]

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 hard drives for backups. And a multi-flash reader.

The Pentium Pro box also has tape backup. Old Travan-1, and I have plenty of tapes.

The kids have an old Pentium 166 to play games like Freddy Fish on. Its not networked.

Total value - maybe $200 if I got real lucky.

But it all works, and works well. Each computer has a purpose - the Deskpro is primarily used by my spouse for grading, web surfing and email. The PC365 anchors shared files, my own email domain, and some other external stuff. The Duron is used for program development.

Some other odds 'n sodds - a Creative IR controller (serial) to control music playback. An old external touchpad, because I find it more useable than most mice. Old IBM M-series keyboards, because they make me happy.

All chosen for function and cheapness. I don't buy new kit anymore (except hard drives).

Ratboy.

My setup

[Anonymous Coward]

My setup at my parents place:

A P166 running IPCop, that does dialup, connected to some shonky old AP I got off ebay, and my laptop, when I remember to bring it home with me.

My setup in uni:

An SMC barricade(11b) does firewalling / AP duties, my desktop running Debian unstable, and my laptop running unstable as well, and a soekris net4501 currently being used for a project, that will one day take over the duties of the evil closed-source no-shell badness SMC barricade.

Pretty average really, nothing special.

This Old Network

[tverbeek]

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 server
• Assorted cheapo 10-100BT hubs and switches
• SDSL adapter

What's off, but has been on in the past week:

• Apple iBook G3/500 with Airport, OS X.3, writing anywhere (e.g. on the front porch earlier today)
• Gateway PentiumII/200 laptop, Mandrake 9.2, permanently placed on the couch for casual surfing while watching TV
• Toshiba Satellite PentiumIII/900 laptop, hooked up to external LCD because the built-on one died, Win98SE, for old Win apps I haven't yet weaned myself from and (because it has one of those analog "modem" thingies in it) emergency dial-up when Speakeasy goes offline (several hours earlier this week, the longest outage in years)
• Compaq Presario with Cyrix/266, Win98SE, for backing up my trusty old Psion Revo (because this dinosaur actually has an RS232 port)

Off for a while now, because life's too busy to play or to relive old memories:

• Apple All-In-One G3/233, OS X.3, my Mac before I could afford the iBook and the G5
• Mac Quadra/25, System 7.5, my Mac before the G3 AIO
• Gateway Celeron/333, BeOS 5 (probably Zeta eventually), just because
• PC's Limited Turbo XT upgraded to Pentium/150, RH7 Linux, former web and mail server
• Compaq Contura 486/25 laptop (mono LCD), Win31, toy web server (ZBServer)
• Compaq Presario 386/25, Coyote Linux, toy web server (thttpd)

Re:Typical Geek Home Network? No such thing-Scanne

[dougmc]

Not one has a networked scanner

What kind of scanner? I'm not sure how this is relevant to the discussion at hand, but if you're looking for a radio scanner, there's always http://www.dxtuners.com/. Running a node for these people on your home network would be pretty geeky ...

Can't think of any networked document scanners, though some of the big copy machines can also work as a network printer and scanner -- the scanner function just saves files to a SMB (I guess) share somewhere. So that would be a nice networked scanner, at least if you had enough room for a couch sized device at home.

My network

[szyzyg]

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 - it's my firewall and is pretty darn solid since most exploits target different architectures.

mache

[itzdandy]

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 athlon t-bird 1.2Ghz.....plan to build up a mythbox from parts

Now I pay the electricity bills,

[jago25_98]

not a lot ;)

Play by all means but being cheap can be expensive

Include the following...

[nbdy]

First Linux, there is no Linux boxes in ur home network. - Webcam attached to some of machine to motion detecting and automatically send the pictures to remote host when you are not home. - A mobile toy car with a cam that can be remoted controled via internet when you are not at home. You can play with your cats/dogs when you at work. - Sensors and watering control to water your plants (if you have any) when you need to go out for a while. ...

beware of raid on lvm

[Rufus211]

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 partitions. You still get a lot of the advantages, just you have to rebuild more often. If I want to resize a disk I just raidhotgenerateerror on all the partitions on that disk, take everything on the disk offline, then add them back.

Re:beware of raid on lvm

[Hardwyred]

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

[swillden]

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.

Our network

[Anonymous Coward]

outside firewall:
{webserver} (static ip) Athlon 3200+
Firewall HP Netserver E 45 (266 pentium)
mail server (currently cold)

inside and hot most of the time:
> {new laptop} hp pavillion laptop 512k 3200+ 64bit athlon (dual boot win XP home/ SUSE 9.1)
> {old laptop, mail} thinkpad 600e winxp pro/ubuntu
> {itunes, Mac testing, mac office, VPC with win 98 and suse} emac 1.2 512k panther (10. 3) osx
> {wifes laptop} compaq t1000 tablet PC (XP tablet edition, 1gig transmeta)
> {xp office test and fax} emachines t1090
> {dvd, video catpure} athlon 3200+ win xp pro
> {wifes desktop, mail, ms office} win xp pro

two wireless routers being used only as access points for coverage throughout the home

cold exept when needed
microvax II
alpha server 1000a
hp d370 (hp-ux 11)
hp 735 workstation (hp-ux) 10.2
a couple of older sun boxes running solaris 8
a couple of older (os 8 and older macs)

misc pc parts and cables
lots of older stuff not on the network because it is not needed on the network. (including a couple of old lisas)

This is posted anonymously so that it is not a shopping list for burglers

I have gotten rid of a bunch of stuff over the last year (probably 300lbs+ worth of stuff)

I have a Mac SE30 sitting in my office

[leonbrooks]

It works, although no ethernet. How far from Perth, Western Australia are you? (-:

Re:I have a Mac SE30 sitting in my office

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

About 13,000 miles, I think. Give or take.

Re:I have a Mac SE30 sitting in my office

[Bobsledboy]

Haha, right there. I'll have it ;-)

Samba4 can simplify that

[leonbrooks]

Run it up on your file server (or firewall, but...) and you can throw away the Domain Controller.

bits and pieces

[siegesama]

• 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 FileZerver NAS box that I found on eBay cheap. exports a single NFS image that home directories are synched to nightly
• proliant 2500 with disk expansion array. 13 disks in all. Currently powered off, because it only provided around 200GB after RAID and was way too noisey.
• FC2 box with two 250GB disks doing nothing but NFS on the core net. Hosts home directories. Synchs user home dirs (not the public media dirs, they're too large) nightly to the NAS box mentioned previously.
• HP Procurve 4000m switch
• APC 1000kVA UPS, APC 750kVA UPS
• Huge Compaq Rack enclosure with all the above stuffed inside (not really "on the network" but worth mentioning!)
• FC4t3 desktop
• FC3 Inspiron 600m
• My wife's iBook
• HP lj4m printer with NIC.

Almost all of it is scrounged equipment (the laptops obviously aren't). The rack is a gift from my father-in-law (best Christmas EVER)

Various and Sundry Stuff

[Metzli]

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.

The Essentials

[nuintari]

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 is the router. Hand out static IP's to resident machines, dynamic for guests, and have a local dns server for faster queries, plus, its all fun to configure in convoluted ways for no reason whatsoever.

Third, ya need a fileserver, NFS (or, be brave, and do AFS), plus SMB, share /home all over the place. This should not be a workstation, all this machine should do is serve files. Format a workstation? No biggie, all your files are on the fileserver. Store everything here, that's what it is for, its accessable to every workstation in the house, and its....

Backed up, yes, forth essential is a backup server. Amanda is nice, but a pain to configure, I started out with rsync and some scripts. Tape drive is nice, but not nessesary. Just be sure you have enough space to mirror everything on the fileserver. Its not the greatest backup system, but it beats losing everything.

That's my bare minimum.

current snapshot amid ever-changing variety

[sporktoast]

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/etc)
• Linux box dedicated to audio playback. It has a reasonably powerful FM broadcaster attached (~80 yard range) so we can listen to local MP3/OGGs or distant streams anywhere in the house/yard. Great for cookouts! Playlists are accessible through a variety of methods, so just about any box on the network can manipulate the queue.
• A hacked Virgin Webplayer at the main stereo for streaming something different from what's going out on the FM broadcaster.

I might hook up another Webplayer to use pulling up recipes in the kitchen. I might upgrade the wireless router to an open firmware Linksys WRTG, because SpeakEasy's terms will let me re-sell bandwidth. There's a 4-unit apartment next door with some folks who might be willing to hop on board. SpeakEasy will even handle the billing!

What I'd really like to find is a better music storage system. Move it all out of the file system and into a database. I'm thinking of something that would store the track in whatever format (OGG/MP3/flac), plus whatever metadata you might care about (artist, track title, track #, track length, date, album title, album genre, song genre, writing credits, publishing company, lyrics, album cover & back art, liner notes, producer, band members, guest artists, who played what, record label, affiliated artists, sources of samples or borrowed riffs, drugs the band used while recording, ...).

Work up APIs to plug file-systems into the database so that it can present the data as if it were actual files with appropriate filenames and ID tags. Let the streaming software and Samba look at it as if they were actual files in a filesystem. Create multiple virtual directory systems (similar to Evolution's vFolders) based on whetever metadata you care about (all non-classical/non-jazz instrumentals; everything with "love" in the title; Beatles recorded before 1970 with only Mac-Len co-writing credits; everything that samples James Brown; P-Funk and ALL related side projects; etc.). Have it name the file according to whatever scheme you prefer (Artist-SongTitle.foo)

Re:current snapshot amid ever-changing variety

[DJCF]

Out of curiosity, what software do you use for your Linux box dedicated to audio playback? Also, what hardware do you use for the FM transmitter? Thinking of setting something like that up myself.

Real geeks...

[dacarr]

Real geeks have one or more static IP addresses, and run servers from their home. =^_^=

Re:Real geeks...

[DJCF]

... or have a single, dynamically-assigned IP address and run servers from their home.

Worthless Blog, Baby!

[trentfoley]

Any self respecting geek would have at least one machine set up as an apache server running a lame blog that just talks about the geeky crap that nobody give a shit about. And, since I am a self respecting geek (the only kind of respect I can get), here's mine: http://www.foleyhome.com./

I've got the PREMIER mixed-platform network!

[Kymermosst]

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 for learning Solaris 10, some general purpose stuff, and for having local compatibility with the University's Sun boxen.

1 Power Macintosh 6400, MacOS 8.1. Used for TV, and a couple old (but fun) Mac games.

1 D-link 16-port 10/100Mb switch.

1 USR8022 802.11b wireless router. (Used for routing)

1 USR8054 802.11g router. (Used as an access point)

1 Shiva Fastpath 5 LocalTalk/EtherTalk/MacIP router.

1 Apple IIgs, System 6.0.1. For my retrocomputing enjoyment... this accesses files on the network via netatalk on the SS10. (Localtalk->Fastpath 5)

Why have all this hooked together? Because I can.

My Setup

[1eyedhive]

My network, though simple, contains the following:
1 RCA Cable modem, comcast issue.
1 P2-350, gentoo, runs shorewall, and teamspeak. Serves TS for my lan party group, runs firewall and QoS between the intarweb and my lan, appropriatly named, the DHD)

1 Dual P2-400, gentoo again, LAMP, Blackbox via VNC, Bittorrent.
Equipped with a 550GB RAID array. Acquired for its server class more then anything else. E-bay.

1 Athlon XP 1800. gentoo, LAMP (secondary to above), blackbox via VNC, serves as a makeshift terminal server. Also has a 800GB RAID array.

1 Athlon t'bird 1.3: Windows 2000, Radeon 7000 AIW, HTPC.

1 Athlon XP 3000 gaming box. dual head (interfaces to all nix boxen in another room)

1 P4 2.8 Sager 5690 laptop. mobile system. Windows XP Pro

1 Athlon XP 1800, windows 2000, connects to a HP PSC1300 inkjet/scanner, a Laserjet 1200 and a LJ 4si printer.

Workshop:
space for three powered, 1 under repair boxen on a workbench, single console monitor. Servers have own KVM for local stuff.

Network:
1 cisco catalyst 8 port for server/workshop area, connected to an unmodded WRT54G in AP mode. A cat5 line runs to an Asante managed port serving all but one 'doze box (the third desktop is on the wireless).

Here's what I have:

[Anonymous Coward]

I typed this in w3m. Sorry if the formatting looks bad in mozilla. Here is my list:

• Athlon 1GHz with Debian Unstable

  I built this system a few years ago. It has a really old NVIDIA card, SB Live!, typical cheap ethernet card, and a BTTV tuner.

• IBM Thinkpad R40 with Debian Unstable

  This is my laptop. 'Nuff said.

• Old Celeron 366 with OpenBSD

  This is my router. It has a 56k modem, 2 ethernet cards, and Wi-Fi. It does NAT, runs in hostap mode as a wireless access point (used only by my laptop)

Now we get to the more "interesting" bits:

• Sun Ultra 5

  I bought this on eBay because I really get a kick out of these machines.

• Power Mac Quadra 650 running A/UX.

  Yes, you heard correctly, it runs Apple's early 90s version of Unix.

• Power Mac 5260 running Debian.

  This computer was given to me gratis, so I did what any good citizen would do and put Debian on it. It still has Mac OS too.

I also have a few machines which are not on the network and I don't have much use for.

Re:Here's what I have:

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, a typo. There is no such thing as a "Power Mac Quadra." It's a 68040 machine, so just "Mac Quadra." My bad.

Re:Here's what I have:

[MasterB(G)ates]

I also have a few machines which are not on the network and I don't have much use for.

Can I have them?

My lame home network

[dtfinch]

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 minimal I guess, just MAC address filtering.

The network is connected to the internet through a cable modem. The max download rate is 3mbit, but max upload is only 128kbit, which is very pathetic. It'll probably never come close to its max download rate because the upload cap will start dropping ack packets first. If I actually upload something, acks get dropped and download bandwidth goes through the floor, which I suppose works pretty well in limiting p2p file sharing. I hate to leech, but capping my BitTorrent uploads gives a tremendous, lasting boost in download speed. I get my cable from Charter Communications.

my 2

[SomeGuyFromCA]

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

A 2-bed apt in Surrey, UK contains...

[Anonymous Coward]

Shuttle SB75G2/3GHz/1024MB dual booting XP PRO SP2 and OpenBSD, 18" Iiyama TFT. Main workstation, also runs various VMWare images of XPSP2 so I can test out patches and software in a sandbox.

2 x Compaq Evo D5S 1.7GHz/512MB running OpenBSD, 1st as firewall, 2nd (400GB) as file/www server.

10 x SPARCStation 20s (btw 40-180MHz) with ~2-9GB disks running various incarnations of OpenBSD, NetBSD and Linux. Play area - systems frequently rebuilt.

Dell Latitude C840 Laptop (1600x1200 version) running OpenBSD for penetration testing (my job).

17" Powerbook running OSX 10.3, this is gradually becoming ny new "main" system. The shuttle above will eventually be re-tasked as a DVR.

A 12U 19" Prism data cabinet houses:
- 24-port Cisco 2900XL 10/100 Enterprise switch
- Cisco 1600 ISDN router with WIC-1
- Cisco 2610 Router with 2 x WIC-1
- Cisco 2612 Router with 1 x WIC-1
- Cisco 2503 Router
- D-Link ADSL Router

Multimedia

[Andy Dodd]

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 theory, a home network can be used for home automation, but good home automation systems are still way too expensive. (X10 is way too limited, but it's the only reasonably economical system so far. I recall reading about a new system being released that is supposed to be as cheap as X10 but much more flexible though.)

Mac holds Windows profiles; WinXP backups/games

[ccmay]

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
• D-Link DI-604 router providing NAT & firewall to broadband
• D-link 8-port gigabit ethernet unmanaged switch
• Canon i960 color inkjet printer
  • attached to Airport Extreme base station
  • shared among all computers
    (including WinXP machine using Bonjour for Windows)
• Brother MFC-8840DN monochrome laser fax/printer/copier/scanner
  • on direct Ethernet connection
  • HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. STABLE. RELIABLE. COMPATIBLE.
• Epson 3200 Photo scanner
  • Connected to G5 via FireWire
  • Shared to other Macs
• Sprint Wireless broadband connection to the Internet
• DynDNS to point the outside world to my network
  (internal DNS handled by G5)
• Miscellaneous USB & FireWire hubs to connect all the extras
  (external HD, digital camera, digital video, BlueTooth, iSight, label printer, joystick, etc.)

I do not keep any important data on the Windows box, except for backups of the Mac server that perform automatically to SMB partitions via RsyncX every night. Windows is for connecting to the VPN at work, and for my kids to play PC-only games. My family has accounts that authenticate and mount Windows profiles from the G5 Server, which also manages mobile accounts on the two Mac laptops. Everybody's documents are accessible from every computer, and synchronized with the portable home directories on the laptops.

I manage the laptops pretty heavily with OSX Server, and they can only connect to the Internet via a proxy connection to the G5, which is running KidsGoGoGo to filter Internet content for the kids.

When we move into our new house next year, I'll have a real electronics closet behind my office, where much of the networking apparatus will move. At that time I'll probably pick up a used XServe to be the main server for the household.

Other projects for the future include home automation, home theater, and a g5 iMac for the kitchen/family room.

-ccm

YES! (was: Re:Interesting Question)

[beavis88]

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.

Yeah, but

[b00m3rang]

it's there mostly so I can stay in practice, since my job requires fixing them.

3 parts

[KenFury]

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 cheap colour inkjet.

Then I have testing. If I want to break stuff this is where I do it. currently it has, a cisco 3640, cisco 2950, some 1200 AP's, an old sparc box, 2 win 2k3 servers that are ghosted every month or so, and some old workstations, oh also a G4 800. This network is off most of the time.

The one thing I have noticed is that as you start doing more complex things at work you no longer want 60 boxen doing crazy things. I want some reliable systems with good uptime and some hardware to experiment and trash. However, 6 years ago I had a lot more stuff that was on all the time and never used.

My hotch potch...

[poolmeister]

* P2-266M laptop runs XP (SP1a to avoid 'Event ID 4226') - Internet gateway, firewall & network AV montoring.
* P4 1.7G tower runs SuSE - general PC, file server, 24/7 P2P slave ;)
* Centrino 2G lappy runs XPSP2/SuSE - The every-day PC.
* Ethernet enabled standalone DVD/MP3/MPEG4 player - A cheap & cheerful CD/DVD/LAN based media player
* Not to forget my PS2 ;)

All does me proud... Archos's new touch screen, WiFi, Linux based PMA400 PVR looks as if it could be a cool edition to the home media network.

Thought I was a Geek.

[Anonymous Coward]

Until I saw what everyone else here has in their house. But I also don't have a lot of money to waste on certain things. That being because I'm still in college (1 semester left, in Management Information Systems), married, and have a little girl on the way.

But I think I've done alright for my setup.

I have nice gaming PC w/ a dual boot of Windows XP Pro and Fedora Core 3. I'm new to Linux so I'm just messing around with that at the moment. Starting to really like it though. My goal is to run Linux (probably Suse in the end) as my main OS and just use XP for gaming.

I used to have a dual display of 2 19inch CRT's, but one went out. So I tv-out'd to a 27inch tv and bought a futon for my office so my wife and I can watch our television shows and divx movies or whatever.

Although I didn't know about a certain piece of hardware someone else has, the wireless media center which I could hook directly to our living room television and use the bigger tv and surround sound. But for now this setup works.

Also have an old dell laptop w/ win2k that my wife uses on the wireless network. Not much security, just mac access control.

If I had a faster upload rate (cable access now) I would like to setup another box and run a file/web server or something.

I would also like to get my dual monitors setup again and forget about the tv. Then get the wireless media center and just watch d/l'd television shows and whatnot from the living room.

just braggin

[Anonymous Coward]

p4/xp pIII/2000
dell l400 laptop suse 9.2
6 foot rack cabinet
1u c500 suse 9.1 www
2u va Linux 501 suse 9.2 smb (pdc) ldap
2u va Linux 501 suse 9.2 mysql
2u va Linux 501 suse 9.2 smb (bdc)
xseries 330 suse 9.2 iptables dhcpd bind

Geek net?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 1 HP 9000/370 running netBSD (1984), 1 SGI Octane with rack mount SCSI raid (12 disks), 1 SGI O2 with Firewire, 2 x Linux X86 boxes (File and network services), CheckPoint Firewall-1 + VPN on SecurePlatform, Wlan, A couple of laptops. All equipment is placed in a "server room" where I have KVM's hooked up to the computers and extender cables running up to the floor above where I have my monitors/keyboard/mice... So totally noise free environment...

Oh... I almost forgot.. I am installing air condition in my serverroom pretty soon... Summers comin and the heat... oh the heat... Poor little boxes...

Am I geeky?

A POS Linksys router/switch combo....

[gatkinso]

... an old D-Link switch, stolen from work ... three old PC's running various flavors of RedHat ... my wife's XP laptop

BUT, on the other hand, my house is fully wired with CAT 5e. So even though it sucks, it is all very pretty! :-P

Your STD geek network

[tbuskey]

This is not my network exactly, but more of the generic geek network:

Internet connection
Firewall
Network hub/switch
System to play with (gaming PC/console)
System to work on (main desktop/laptop)
Systems to hack on (not the main, not the game, not needed to run stuff)
Server(s) of some sort (might be the firewall or the main system or a seperate system(s))

Beyond that, add various devices:
Wireless access
Printers
PVR
Old systems
Custom devices
Terminals
X10
Terminal servers
KVMs

I'm sure I've missed stuff but I think for a generic description, this sums it up.

Some of these may be combined or in multiples. Some firewalls also serve DHCP. I have 3 laptops as my main systems with a file server in the basement.

The works!

[OverDrive33]

I just moved in with some flat mates from college. We have 5 regular use PCs (2 mac, 2 WinXP, and 1 Linux). Our main internet gateway/house file server is a PIII 900 Dell, 2 10/100 Nics (one taking the internet, the other to my Linksys WiFi), 1 gbE NIC connected to my PC sharing my ripped movies, and cds with everyone. The Dell runs Smoothwall, and a shoutcast server (so everyone in the house can play the same music at the same time). My Linksys router runs WiFi Box. There's plans to build a HTPC for the TV room... but we may just wait for the XBox 360.

off the shelf or not?

[mqx]

One of the key criteria I would look for is how much of the gear is on or off the shelf.

If you have off the shelf expensive/new-tech gear, I don't really consider that to be geeky: you're probably a toy boy. Many pseudo-geeks have lots of cool gear, but it's all standard issue and simply about their wallet.

From my point of view, geek has to do whether the network has custom gear, or intesting bespoke use of technology. Some examples are:

- old notebooks or other gear reflashed or converted into new devices, e.g. photo frame from a notebook, or a PDa turned into a remote control, etc.

- deployment of IPv6, or zeroconf, or multicast

- use and integration with asterisk or VOIP, or even using portable wireless device as a media phone, or video conferencing with wireless cam

That's a small amount I can come up with now: any others?

network

[axjdo]

Dual 867 G4, 1.5 Gb ram,3 x 80gb HDD. Ibook G3 500mhz,384mb-ram, 10gb hdd, airport. Tivo Series 2 (black) 40 hour

Mine

[sagenumen]

Assuming my sister is home from prep school and I from college, this is what our network looks like:

• Cable Modem
• Netgear MR814 Router/Wireless AP - A dinosaur, I know, but has never failed me once.
• 2 Strictly-XP boxes.
• 1 HDD-less Dell Inspiron 8000 running m0n0Wall - Connected to WLAN via a Cisco Aironet 350 PCMCIA
• 1 Cisco ATA 186 for the Analog-to-VoIP deal. The whole house phone system is then connected to this using a Leviton M-Block.
• 1 Netgear router that creates another subnet. The m0n0 box is configured as the WAN for this router.
• 1 Fedora Core 3 machine connected to the LAN via the Netgear/m0n0 combo. Only sees use for web browsing by my mother.
• 1 FreeBSD box that serves no purpose as of yet.
• 1 Linksys WAP54G connected to the m0n0 subnet. Might eventually see use as a hotspot for my neighbors (all 5 of them). Still looking for suitable freeware Portal/Accounting software for this. Please email (or respond) with any suggestions.