Posts tagged with "networking"

I have a pile of first generation Google Wifi units that I’m upgrading from to the latest Nest Wifi Pro that has WiFi 6e support. I want to reuse the older network devices for a secondary network but want greater control over them.

“Don’t bury the lede”

A working HP ProCurve Java WebUI screenshot to show that I got it working.

My earlier post HP ProCurve 2800 initial setup discussed an initial configuration of a network switch and mentioned in passing that I got the ProCurve Java WebUI working in a relatively safe manner. Here is how I put that together on a modern machine running Windows 10 Professional 64-bit.

^{_{WARNING: It should go without saying that you should not use the FireFox Web Browser from January 2017 that we are setting up here for the very old Java Web App supported on hardware released in 2004 and EOL in 2013 on the public internet. You will be hacked without a doubt in seconds. These are completely unpatched versions of two very very very old pieces of software. You have been duly warned.}}

I inherited, from a stack of old junk hardware, two Netgear Powerline 500 Nano XAVB5101 plugs. I thought I would try it out for a quick network connection between two floors in my new house using the existing power cabling.

Wow did I learn a lesson in a combination of networking and electrical power the hard way… with a repeatedly blown breaker.

I have been using the Dell Wyse 3040 as awesome little systems for my Tailscale nodes in my multiple joint homelab networks. These systems are super low power consuming and physically small enough to just plug and go. Truly, deploying a WireGuard®-based VPN solution could not be any easier. I have four of these units connecting my homelab networks across three geographically diverse locations.

Get access to switch console

You will need a console serial cable to get into your HP ProCurve 2800 switch.

Here is the one I bought from Amazon OIKWAN - USB Cisco Console Cable, USB to RJ45 Console Cable which has been useful on some other project as well. I have a break out for the RJ45 to let me use this on an old BlackArmor NAS and to interface with some robotics equipment. You mileage may vary but this one works great for me.

This is the ProCurve 2810-24 that is all 1Gbps ports with four SFP (not SFP+) ports that you can use with fiber or DACs. I bought three of these so I have a SAN and two home networks… then I picked up another one as a spare because it was less than $25 on eBay. So I’m all in on this switch for my home networks.

This is a meandering post without an immediate happy outcome.

I am working on a five node ProxMox 8.1 cluster with three nodes as a Ceph cluster to host my media collection. I’m learning a bunch about Ceph and Proxmox which I’ll post about later. The media collection I am importing into Ceph is a little over 16Tb from ripping my VHS, DVD, BluRay collections of movies and tv shows. Movies end up being less than a third of that content.

This is a project I’ve been thinking about for a long time… how to get 10gbpe+ networking in a homelab without breaking the bank.

First option is just getting some DAC Cables and dual port 10Gbpe NICs then build a point-to-point ring network. That is relatively cheap and would set me up for future switched networks. DACs could be swapped out for GBics that use copper (thermal issues) or fiber (delicate).

Next is a relatively cheap at a couple hundred dollars switch with likely a low number of SFP+ ports. This is ~$200-$500 with anywhere from 2 to 16 ports at 10Gbps. Often switches with 10Gbps advertised only have one or two ports at that speed so shop carefully. You still have the cost of the NICs and cabling but only need one port on the NIC.

Lastly, you could go all in with an enterprise switch like the HP ProCurve 5406zl which is a module hosting monster of a switch. These are massively upgradable but come with a lot of complexity to set up and manage. They are also incredibly loud (intended for server rooms) and suck a ton of power which generates lots of heat (thermal load). These are getting cheaper but are heavy to ship and still usually several hundred dollars with modules that can cost thousands. Don’t expect a warranty on these as they are being pushed out of enterprise usage as end of life.