Interesting* home networking issues

*if you're a geek.

Since moving in to our new house in Oakland this month, I have been immersed in projects getting everything in the house set up.  The house we moved into had been previously owned by a home theater installer, and is subsequently loaded with geeky goodies.  It has an electric projector screen that is controlled with a switch, a projector in the living room, and is wired throughout with speakers and control panels for independent control in the bedrooms.  I think I counted 25 pre-wired ethernet ports.  The nerve center of this awesomeness lives in the basement, mounted in a 2-post 19" rack.

So basically, the house is a dream.

With once exception.  The previous tenant didn't use or understand the system, and so it isn't in the best shape (or operational).

Since moving in, I have spent a fair amount of time working on two projects.

1. Get the internet/home network up.
2. Get the home theater and speakers fully operational. 

The day before we moved in, I reluctantly had Comcast Business setup our business class Cable internet. After having very poor experiences with the non-buisness Comcast in the past. I decided to give the business side of the house a go.  This was mostly due to a lack of options (it was either this or AT&T's U-Verse).  I had heard great things about Comcast Biz from some of the people at work, and Google employees get a discount for the service.  So how is it?  So far, so fast.  A 25meg connection is killer for downloads.  I can't imagine what having the Google Fiber to the home is like (probably 40 times better).

One of the challenges around this setup is my desire to have a separate guest network that has access to the internet, but does not have access to my LAN (with my computers, servers and media centers).  I have a Netgear WNDR3700 for wireless (used as an AP), and a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 with Tomato firmware for the routing.  Unfortunately, the Netgear's guest networking feature doesn't work when it isn't used as a gateway between the users and the edge of the network.  Without the WAN port in use, it doesn't know what the internet is, and therefore what to keep private.

The other challenge is that Tomato has no concept of vlans, or a separate guest network.  I tried the AP isolation feature, but found it didn't properly isolate the WLAN from the LAN.  I have been tinkering with DD-WRT, which can handle vlans, but am not finding it very stable.  I have had to reload configs twice after it has lost its mind.  I have come to the conclusion that two routers (plus the Netgear as my private AP) is the right way to go.  I ordered an WRT54GL (the gold standard of hackable routers) from Newegg today, and plan to use that, with either Tomato or OpenWRT serving the LAN, and the Buffalo serving the Guest LAN, double NAT'ed off the Linksys to allow me to control QOS to the guest LAN.

Whew.

Now for the home theater.  We're going TV-less lately, relying on the internet for our content.  Given the new speedy internet, it is working quite well.  That said, one thing the house didn't have was a plug and play setup for a Home Theater/Media Center PC.  I ran a new Cat-5 run from the patch panel to an existing hole in the floor and connected up my Linux XBMC/HTPC.  All it needed was a 50ft optical cable and a new HDMI cable for the video and I was connected to the Receiver (in the rack), and in business.  It sounds pretty amazing.  Did I mention there's a 15" subwoofer and 7.1 surround?  B-)

Still remaining to be done is figuring out how to make the control panels that control the sound in each of the rooms work.  I am set up to meet with the former owner of the house who installed all this stuff after the 8/17/10 and get it all sorted.  I think I am close, but having the brains behind the install here should make it much easier (and faster).

Whew again.

Time for bed.  Stay tuned.