In this post we look at setting up a small home/office network and broadband connection for business/family use.

A business grade broadband connection is preferable, but not essential. One or more static IP addresses can be useful, and these will typically only be available on a business contract.

Look out for the upload speed offered – this can be more important than the download speed.  At least 512kbits per second is desirable for sending large e-mails, uploading files and for voice connections.

Almost any wireless router will suffice, but consider more advanced offerings such as Billion’s Biguard S5 which can handle VPN connections and also has a transparent DMZ capability (allowing hosting of websites on a server outside of the firewall.

The hub of the home/office network should not be the router, but should rather be a fast gigabit switch with PC’s connected over a wired network.  The reasons for this become apparent when we look at backing up and synchronization of data.

As well as a wired network it is useful also to have wireless capability and the 802.11g (54g) standard is generally adequate where an Internet connection is required from a laptop or portable device.  This is gradually being replaced by the 802.11n standard with speeds over 100Mbits/second, useful for large file transfers. We use a Linksys WAP 54G wireless gateway, although this is getting a bit dated nowadays.
Network Infrastructure

Network Infrastructure

In this post we look at specifying and setting up a home/office file server which can also be used as a backup e-mail and web server.  We’ll configure it with a graphical interface so that it can also be used as a spare workstation.  The operating system will be Ubuntu.

In specifying the hardware we are looking for a computer with quality components suitable for 24/7 operation, having low power consumption and quiet components.  We also want to achieve reasonably fast data transfer rates whilst considering mitigations against the risk of hardware or power supply failure.

To achieve these objectives we need:

• a good quality case with effective cooling.  A mini tower style case is satisfactory.  120mm case fans front and rear will keep the disk drives cool and extract warm air from the case.  For those willing to build their own, Antec’s Sonata III is a good value case with an  included PSU.
• A good quality ‘eco’ PSU, to help with low power consumption
• Motherboard, processor and memory are not critical.  A low specification Core 2 Duo and 2GB memory will be adequate. A 120mm fan on the CPU will help keep noise levels to a minimum.
• The GPU is important.  It does not need to be powerful or expensive. but low power consumption is important.  Models sold with a heatsink rather than a fan for cooling may be more suitable.  NVidia cards are generally better supported by Linux/Ubuntu than ATI cards.
• CPU, low power consumption

Quiet operation 120mm fans, cpu fan speed controlled by m/b, variale speed case fans, cooling for HDD’s
Fast storage, Raid 0 for speed 2 disks. Separate drive for operating system.  Consider Raid 10 or Raid 5 for storage Min 3 x 500GB disks
Linux compatible hardware
Graphical environment for general purpose desktop use – cheap low power card usually adequate for basic desktop use Nvidia preferable for working drivers.
Two network cards one firewalled for internet connection, one firewalled for local network. Fixed IP addresses.
Memory 2GB usually more than adequate

Build it or buy it – difficult to achieve all suggested features in a pre-built system.

Screen – some good deals on 19 inch 4:3 lcd monitors

Software

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Alternate CD – excellent support – up-to-date packages
mdadm for software raid configuration
Tools
gftp
gedit
Partitioning /business /family /multimedia pre-planning of size
Apache/MySQL/PHP
Samba
Postfix/Amavis/Dovecot

Cron jobs for backup

Primary web server (VPS or hosted) > Backup web server (this computer)
File server (this computer) > Backup file server (any desktop computer)

Debugging – logs