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.
