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I want to share the way my home network is setup because it works for me, and I might give you ideas as to how to set up yours. My data is very valuable to me and I will also share with you how I protect and access it from (almost) anywhere. A hard drive failed on me about 5 years ago and my data (music, documents, videos, photos…etc) was lost forever. I did manage to get a few files back from online/CD backups, but for the most part, I lost the files and I couldn’t afford thousands of $$ on professional recovery. First, I will list the devices I have running and their roles:

ii. Internet. I chose Charter as my ISP because they have proven to be reliable and they offer the fastest internet connection in the area (10/1 mbs). But as soon as FIOS starts laying down that sweet optic goodness in my area, I’m giving Charter the boot.

i. Router. I have a cheap wireless Belkin router for my internet sharing/networking duties. The wireless portion of it is off (I don’t use my laptop at home very often). I make sure to keep the firmware up to date and the wireless connection encrypted when its on. It works great for basic port forwarding and it has a small footprint. One thing that isn’t set by default on this router are the DNS servers; I use OpenDNS, my ISP’s suck!

1. Server. An old (very, very old) HP Proliant LC3 I got from a client that was getting rid of it a couple years ago. Featuring a Pentium III 500 MHz, 512 Mb of RAM and two 36 GB SCSI drives. I added an 80 GB IDE hard drive (the music drive), and a 150 GB IDE hard drive (the document drive). It runs Windows XP Pro and it permanently lives in a closet, out in my balcony. All my documents are on this server, where backups are performed every night, and thanks to the magic of RDC & VNC, I can access my server from anywhere! More details on I set up this server coming up on part II.

2. Desktop PC. Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz, 2 GB RAM, Nvidia 7300 video card, Windows XP (switched back from Vista about 8 months ago, but I’ll leave that for another blog post). Most importantly, dual monitors. This is my every-day computer, which I use to blog, design and work in general. I am not a gamer, so an extremely fast processor or high-end video card is not necessary for me, but the mid-range Core 2 Duo and the 2 GB of RAM are more than enough to have iTunes playing music, Firefox with a million tabs open, Photoshop CS3 and Illustrator CS3 running at the same time with no lag. More details on how my desktop is setup, how I can configure it to pull documents from the server and a picture of my desk/entertainment system setup coming up on part III.

3. Workbench/Secondary PC. Old Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz, 1 GB RAM. This runs various OS’ (Ubuntu, XP, OSX…) and I use it for data recovery (hooking up old drives and retrieving data) and general experimentation. I don’t like to use my work computer for experimentation or testing out different operating systems and this rather old system is well suited for these tasks.

4. Soft-modded original XBOX. I include this in my home network because I use it to stream movies from the my server to my HDTV (where the XBOX does a decent job of “upscaling” DivX movies). Not to mention it does NES games, pictures, Youtube and music. The soft-mod process was simple and only cost about $25 (not to mention I didn’t have to crack open the case or solder anything). More details on how it did it can be found here. Also, when modding, use Filezilla as your FTP program (open source) and 7-zip as your decompressing programs (also open source).

5. Secondary stuff connected to my network

a. Slingbox: for out-of-home TV viewing. Hooked up to my Moxi DVR and the network, I can watch TV from my Pantech Duo smartphone or my EEE, anywhere, anytime (provided I have access to the cloud).

b. VoIP via Broadvoice: as my office number and free international calls for about $20 a month. I use my Broadvoice number as my business line, which simultaneous rings at my desk and at my cellphone. I also instantly get an email on my phone notifying me of the time and the caller ID of the call.

c. Printer: Brother laser printer connected to a printer server on my network so that any PC connected to network can print. I’ve had it for about a year and a half and haven’t replaced the toner cartridge yet. Granted, I don’t print a lot, but I bet I would’ve changed ink cartridges at least a couple of times if my main printer was an inkjet. For color prints, I’ve had the same cheap HP printer/scanner for 3 years.

To conclude this pillar aticle (thanks, Ades), my home/home office setup is ideal for me, and it has been working great for the past 2 years and I am confident that my data is safe (backed up). I depend on my network for work and for entertainment so I’ve designed it as simple as possible, but always expecting the worse. It may sound like a bunch or wires go all around the house but I did a nice job of keeping the wiring clean and simple so no one knows that I’ve got such a complicated setup all around my apartment. Stay tunes for part II where I discuss how my server was set up.

How’s your network setup at home for work/play?