In addition to ham radio, I am also a bit of an experimenter with computers and networks. Quite a few years ago, I started playing around with DD-WRT for consumer equipment, and happily ran different iterations of that over the years. As a fan of gaming and video streaming, I have always looked for ways to improve my network speeds and, with how easy it is to crack wifi anymore, my security as well. I also have three kids, so I am not only worried about how secure things are, but online safety is a concern that has grown with my children.  The older and more connected they become, the more advanced my filters and firewalls have to be.

I addressed the firewall issue in my project article about Sophos XG. There are several pieces of equipment that run my home network and I will cover them here. The first piece is the aforementioned Sophos XG firewall. It is contained in a Rosewill brand 2U case, and does a great job! Read the linked article above for detail on it.

The next item is my RADIUS server. I have it running on an old Google Mini Search Appliance. This is a cool little box that I picked up pretty cheap. The OS is Ubuntu and is running FreeRADIUS. It handles this task well and I am probably going to move my TFTP server
(more on that below) over to it before too long.

I also run an old Dell PowerEdge 1950 III. With a pair of quad-core CPUs and 32GB of RAM, it is a great, but noisy older server. I run VMware’s vSphere on it and use it for various projects and experiments. It is great for testing out new Linux distros as well as running small game servers like Minecraft and Space Engineers for my kiddos and I. 

I am also running a VERY old PowerEdge 2550. Honestly, I would not have purchased it, but I goofed up when I read the advert. For some reason, I saw 2950 and not 2550. Either way, I darn near got it free, with several other units to use for spare parts. I put Debian on it and decided to use it as a home DNS server and run BIND9 on it. It handles this duty quite well as the requirements are pretty low. I have noticed a marked improvement in my page load speeds after switching to it as primary DNS via my firewall’s settings.

I also run a small TFTP server on a Raspberry Pi. I use the TFTP server to provide firmware updates to my switch (below) and the various routers and other equipment I have used over the years. At some point, I will hit on another use for the Pi and will move the TFTP server to my RADIUS box.

All of my equipment interconnects via a Dell PowerConnect 2724 managed switch, a good 24-port switch. I am not running any VLANS on it at the moment as I really don’t have a need. I have one of my wireless SSIDs on a VLAN, but that is handled by my firewall as it is a captive portal/hotspot setup I use to control the kids internet time.

I keep all of this contained in the 14U cabinet that is out in the garage. I have a few horribly taken photos below.  As the cabinet is new to me, it still isn’t organized well. The wires and cables need a lot of attention and cleaning up. At some point I will grab a few new photos, but that will have to wait until I get the rest of the garage better organized. Functional is good enough for now.