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?

Ran Another Test by Connecting to a Different Room Power Outlet

 I ran a different test with the AV2 Powerlines.  This time I purposefully plugged a different AV2000 into my small bedroom outlet to see what the increase in bandwidth would be from the living room to the small bedroom.  Unfortunately, the increase was only about doubling the speed.  I was getting around 93 Mbit/sec throughput instead of 35 Mbit/sec.

The test was composed of putting a new Powerline adapter into the small bedroom, connecting the new Powerline adapter to my HomeLab switch, and running some iperf tests.  The small bedroom circuit breaker is on the opposite side of the breaker box from my large bedroom circuit breaker; and on the same side as the circuit breaker for the living room.  Again this is 25 year old wiring.  I guess in the grand scheme of things I could have an electrician move the wires between the two breakers to get the large bedroom circuit breaker on the same side of the breaker box as the living room circuit breaker.  But, is the increase in speed worth it?  It will cost me money but in the end I will have more bandwidth.

Update: I am now trying to see if there is a different way of putting my Travel Routers and arranging my network in the back bedroom that will increase my throughput to the HomeLab.

Experiments Show PowerLine Adapters Often Don’t Work Like You Think They Should

The IT department here in the Retirement Community keeps making changes to make things good.  So it occurred to me that maybe things might have changed in my back bedroom for the good.  So I set out to find out what kind of speeds that I was getting between my input setup and my back bedroom where my HomeLab rack resides.  So I set up some speed tests using iperf on opposite sides of the input flow.  Much to my surprise, I found out that I was only getting around 38 Mbps throughput.  I had thought I was getting closer to 1 Gbps, given the type of AV2 units that I was using.  I tried different things like getting the managed switches out of the way, but still was achieving only the 38 Mbps that I had first measured.  I also tried using Speedtest.net and found that this was the max speed that I could get.

I downloaded the TP-Link app so that I could tell what the system was saying that it was getting between units.  It was displaying around 100 Mbps speed between the units, so I started looking into what kind of speeds I could expect with different wall outlets.  I brought in a different unit and added it to the mix and started moving it about the apartment to see what I could find out.  When it was plugged into a circuit that was near one of the two AV2000 units, it would register a speed of 1300-1400 Mbps, but would still measure the 100 Mbps to the other AV2000 unit.  As I was swapping them around, I could see patterns that identified a good vs bad line.  The low bandwidth is probably due to the age of the wiring in this apartment and having to go through an old breaker box.  Nothing I can do about that right now.

I am still trying to find the “sweet” spot to have equipment in the living room, but so far have not found it.

Update: so I have discovered that there are three circuit breakers that the signal is probably passing through.  One for the living room, one for the small bedroom, and one for the large bedroom.  They also appear to be on opposite sides of the mains, so much for finding a "sweet" spot to use.  I am stuck with what I have then.

The New Input Architecture to my HomeLab

 I think I may have solved my problem with the WiFi system here at the Retirement Community.  As I said before, this is a WiFi only environment; I can run Ethernet but not through the walls and not connected to the WiFi equipment and I have no control over the WiFi system.  The WiFi equipment has two main SSIDs, SSID1 and SSID2 in the following diagram.

The Incoming WiFi Architecture

Notice that there are a number of additional elements to the architecture.  The main input to the MainRouter in my HomeLab is through the WiFi Bridge, a Gl-iNet SLATE router.  That in turn goes into a managed switch, RemoteSwitch, which has a trunk line to my MainSwitch through Two TP-Link AV2000s.  The MainSwitch in turn poses the flow as the [WAN] vlan to the WAN port of my MainRouter.  Having the trunk line between two managed switches gives me great flexibility in how I arrange items in my HomeLab.  In fact I can put part of my [SRV] vlan in the living room where the main input equipment goes.  The MainSwitch also connects to other equipment in my HomeLab as necessary.  Normally I have almost a 30 dBm signal drop between the WiFi Access Point in the living room and my large back bedroom.  This input architecture resolves that.

I have an RPiGateway which is being primed to host input ports into my HomeLab from the outside.  As it turns out I can access RPiGateway from anywhere on the Retirement community campus; I just can't access it from the outside (and I don't need to, I'm not working now).  

Over on the right of the diagram is a problem that was solved through the use of a simple switch.  I have a Sleep-Number bed and it requires a WPA/WPA2 shared key encryption setup on 2.6GHz.  It is also a bit fussy on the level of the signal that it connects to.  So in that respect I have a DIR-505L which is connected to the SSID1 and retransmits a WPA/WPA2 shared key setup to the Sleep-Number bed since WPA/WPA2 is not available from the main WiFi setup.

I have a Tempest Weather station on my balcony which has a hub that was not able to receive the WPA/WPA2 shared key setup from the small bedroom, so it is now connected to a NEWIOTSSID coming from my Unifi AP AC Pro access point.  I also have a SRVSSID broadcast from that access point that I can connect to with my personal laptop in order to perform admin functions on my HomeLab while on my balcony.

I am also using the NEWIOTSSID to connect to a series of Tasmota switches mounted in my HomeLab Rack for the purpose of controlling power to several devices, since I may only have need of a couple at a time.