I’ve talked enough about my home network in the abstract. Today, I’m going to walk through the diagram of how things are setup, and where I want to go next. Part of the motivation of this is to setup NagVis, so I can have a slightly prettier picture of my devices and their dependancies than Nagios gives me by default.

So, here’s the network layout map I’ve worked up quickly:

So, the walk through. I’ve got my Airport Extreme hooked up to the cable modem. It’s bridged with an Airport Express, so we’ve got solid network coverage throughout the whole house. It also allows me to attach the Vonage modem directly to the Airport Express in the home office – where it’s easier to use. Additionally, not shown, I’ve got a set of cheap desktop speakers connected to the Airport Express, so we can play music throughout the whole house.

The HP Photosmart is also hooked up to the Airport Extreme, which allows anyone on the network to use the printer. I’ve also got a Seagate FreeAgent drive hooked up, for quick file sharing and the backups of my wife’s laptop. This way, her network use doesn’t rely on my desktops being awake.

My primary workstation, Godzilla, is hooked up to the unmanaged GigE switch, along with the fileserver (vault) and the time machine backup server (thor). This way, my backups and media manipulation don’t show up on the network statistic graphs. Also, I didn’t have enough ports free on the Airport Extreme to put everything on one device.

You may notice right that I don’t have the Xbox hooked up to the network yet. I need to get a second Airport Express to do this, or move the Vonage modem into the entertainment unit. I considered getting the network adapter for the XBox, but it’s damn close to $100, which is the same price as the Airport – and with the Airport, I can hook up a second set of speakers to the AirTunes network, as well as a switch, so if I decide to wire a computer to the television, I’ve got multiple network ports to play with. All network related purchases are put off, though, as there’s other things I want to buy before I extend the network. Another other option, of course, is just getting an AppleTV, as the point of networking the XBox is that I can play media from my computer back on the television.