The networky bits of the loft ...

I've a couple of switches in the loft - one for the PoE network (including the cameras) and one for the gig e network. This is going to change, but for now ...

Hiding under the header tank for the central heating .. the existing support wasn't quite wide enough for a 19 inch rack, but it has enough room to mount the switches vertically! That's Fireball on the left.

Fireball, gig e switch. PoE switch and patch panel

... and a lovely table for an iMac G3 - it's running a 2007 version of YellowDog Linux right now, on its huge 13.5 GB drive - great though if you need to log into something quickly. It seems to have more or less survived being off for the last 10 years, but flashes over occasionally, and the screen geometry is a little off whack now. Bless her.

iMac G3

Router .. and KiCad

Have bought a DIR-868L from that auction site.

Have finally managed to get DD-WRT installed on it. (it was a bit of a bugger, but eventually found some excellent advice on Dlink Forums which quotes quarkysg and his work, and recommends a workaround. And it works!

This should let me specify a static route on the internal interface, so it knows that for 192.168.4.x traffic, it needs to route via 192.68.10.80, the famed Fireball machine. So far haven't found the time or energy to try installing it in da house. It also has made me re-think the network topology a bit, and to bring forwards the network work in support of the new Laboratory!

.. which currently looks like this ..

On an unrelated topic, have decided to make the switch from Eagle 6 to KiCad, avoiding the strange subscription model for Eagle now that those people at Autodesk have bought the company. It's a journey,

More routing fun

I still have the odd issue with routing. It seems that external phones don't always route both ways to internal phones.  The problem is that the Dlink router can't route to the phones - need a static route. Unfortunately Dlink managed to eliminate the option of putting in a static route where the target is on the internal interface when they did a software upgrade a long time ago ...

There are workarounds for most Dlink boxen, but not the DIR-615L I have. Nor can I load DD-WRT firmware on it,

However, it can be done on a Dlink DIR-868L, like the one I have just bought from that Auction Site. We'll see if that fixes things soon ...