Back Together Although I am Looking Through Some New Projects

Well I did manage to get the rack back together once the window washers left.  In the process, I figured out which cables to disconnect from the equipment in the back.  I now have 5 cables coming in to a desktop patch panel and then connected into SW116, a managed GS108Tv2 switch.  From SW116, it goes to the rack.  This means that I have only two connections to the rack; one ethernet and one power.  I have also setup a connection that I can use to occupy the placement of a cable to my FLINT2 router.  I haven't removed the connection to the rack yet, but this should enable me to move the FLINT2 router to the area behind my rack.  What I want to be able to do is power down the rack but still allow my laptop to work and the table electronics to be worked on with connection to the apartment network.  I could still do this with the FLINT1 that I have in the living room if I wish instead.

So now that I have just admitted this, I don't know what I was thinking of moving the FLINT2 for.  Just shows that my mind is still stumbling over various configurations until I get to the right one. Other than bringing down equipment because it is not being used, I am mistified.

Project #33 - Moving the DHCP and DNS over to PiHole

This is one project that has stuck in my craw for a number of years.  I am now in a situation where I am about to change out my network to be in two pieces.  I have enough computers to think about a centralized DHCP/DNS server for the network.  I have used PiHole in the past but now I want to make that the default for all of the routers in my network.  The rub is, I have all of these vlans that need attention when I am giving out IP addresses.  This will be an effort to consolidate the IP gathering and DNS entries into one location that is easier to control.  Some specifics of what I want to do are:

• setup my Netgear switches to force certain IP ranges to certain vlans
• use PiHole to issue DHCP IP addresses tied to their MAC addresses
• if the MAC address is unknown, push it to a guest network
• include both the FLINT1 and FLINT2 routers in the mix
• modify my FLINT2 setup to have one guest network vlan that is passthrough

State of the Network - September 2024

I haven't posted in a while so I thought I might get the blog up to speed.  I have been busily pushing things in the rack to an everyday state.  To do that I had an epihany about the connection between the living room manaaged switch (GS108Tv2) and the back bedroom managed switch (GS116Tv2).  It turns out that instead of using a Powerline adapter, I would be able to use a 35 foot flat Ethernet cable to accomplish the same thing.  So I obtained a flat Ethernet cable, ran it along the floorboard, through the balcony door, around the back of the balcony, through the bedroom door, and plugged into an extension Ethernet cable coming from the back bedroom managed switch.  In doing that, I managed to get the speedtest to triple on downlink (at times) and double the upload speed (at times) [201.9/237 Mbps].  I assume that this means I am approaching the 1Gbps speed between the two managed switches.  This also means that I am not susceptable to power fluctuations on the Ethernet line between the Powerline adapters.

I have also been busily rearranging the rack equipment to use the Netgear M4100-26 and Ubiquity Edgerouter-12.  The Netgear and Edgerouter have been changed to always power on when the rack has power.  This simplifies the overall structure of the rack and eliminates the need for using the two Edgerouter-X routers and another GS108Tv2 switch.  I can now power off those three components until I might need them again.  I left them plugged into the Ethernet patch panel on the bottom.  The only disadvantage is that the Netgear M4100-26 now runs hotter; but the fans at the top are putting out cold air which indicates that it is not as hot as I might assume in the rack; currently at 104 degrees F.

I am now trying to configure a monitor system that can gather statistics and send out commands to update, reboot, shutdown, etc. equipment in the rack.  I hope to continue to get closer to an automatic mode int he rack which will support experiments in the future.

Project #32 - Setup Redundancy/Fallover in the Network

 I got to thinking about how my network is connected and realized that I don't have a way of reducing the outages or recording what has happened.  I have a project that was supposed to tell me the condition of the WiFi connections at any one time, but I don't use that information in any sense.  I also don't have a way for the front of the network to know what the back of the network is doing and vice versa. I don't have a graceful way to shut things down if the network fails from some external problem (mainly power outages which happen from time to time here).  WiFi outages also happen from time to time but they are less important since the backend of my network is mainly for hobby purposes.

Fallover is not apparent in the current setup of my network.  Is that important to me?  It depends on what I am doing at the moment.  If I am wood carving, not at all.  If I am working on an electronic circuit, also not important.  But if I am online how do I keep online without a problem.  I could switch from one network type to another, but is that efficient?  So a number of questions come to mind:

• first of all, what is missing from my network?
• how would the front fail as opposed to the middle and back?
• if the front goes down, how would I know?
• if the middle goes down how would I know?
• does it matter if the back is completely off?
• how can I keep my laptop in the back always available?
• is there a fall over that I can count on?
• can I log what is happening with the network? where?
• how does WiFi from other apartments into bedroom play into this?
• how do I detect how good of a connection I have?
• can I separate out living room from back bedroom?
• would it be profitable to switch AV2000s with a WiFi mesh connnection?
• could the AP-HD be used in a WiFi mesh configuration?

Added a new 802.11ax Router to the Apartment

So I have purchased a new router, the Gl-iNet FLINT (GL-AX1800).  The reason that I did this was to optimize the connection between my HomeLab equipment and the apartment WiFi end point.  The FLINT is located 17 and a half feet from the end point and has 4 external antenna.  In addition, the FLINT is based on OpenWRT, which the SLATE was also based on.  Right now, being a new product, the software load is not quite up to the current edition of OpenWRT, but the beta test versions are promising.  I have downloaded the latest Beta and will be updating this router prior to the full software release.  The reason is to be able to setup vlans so that I can also plug in my TV and DVD player without interfering with the HomeLab connection.

After setting up the router in the space in the living room, I am measuring a speed of 400Mbps/400Mbps to the end point when setup as a repeater.  This is the kind of speed gain that I am hoping for.  The WiFi connection is continuing to reset itself and I need to know why.  I have noticed that the main indication of failure is that the DNS is no longer able to work through the connection and that the Weather Station is no longer pushing out information.

Update: so now the FLINT router has crapped out, possibly because I did some setting I shouldn’t have.  I have updated to the latest v4.1.0 beta without any custom values and now it works.  Go figure.

Update2: the problem with the WiFi connection stopping appears to be related to a DNS issue.  I can still ping IPs but just can't use DNS names.  Is this some setting somewhere?