Michael P. O'Connor

Since I have played around with the NAS, I had the thought I should share out my main data directory on my main computer, and then mount them on all my computers. This way I don’t have to worry about scp the file over do the work and then scp it back. This way I can just have my document directory mounted on all my Linux boxes, and if I need to work with a file, it is already “on” the computer and when I save it will be saved over at the main computer’s file system. I just had to set the “owner” of the files when I mount it on all the other Linux boxes. Took a little bit of work today, but it might save me time in the future, as no need to copy files back and forth.

Along with the other backups I do of my data; I use SpiderOak for off sight, and also sync it with MS one drive [Yes Linux data being synced to OneDrive], I also take a tar.gz backup of it, and store in the local computer, then scp a copy of it to a file server on my network, also I sync the one drive down to another computer. I am now going to do a nightly rsync of the data directory to the NAS I setup. I know maybe I am doing to many backups of the data, but I want to be sure if something happens to my data I can have a chance of getting it back. I will also being coping a copy of my nightly backup tar.gz files up the the NAS.

The funny part is I could have uploaded it to the cloud faster then doing the init sync of the data to the NAS, while in the long run it will not mater, now it is going slower as the Raspberry Pi only has a 10/100Mbit Ethernet port, so it will take longer to load the full 1.3TB to the NAS. Funny as I could upload to the internet in half the time as I tend to get upload speeds of 200Mbits when uploading to the internet now, I have seen as high as 500Mbits, but 200Mbits is about the average I seen.

I have 2 Raspberry Pis (as I have talked about a lot and they are doing network services for me) I am not using m the external hard drive I had attached to my PS4 Pro a while back so I cleaned up games from it, and also from the external drive that I will not be playing anymore on the PS4, especially since I have the PS5, and the PSVR is attached to the PS5. I was able to free enough room up on both the internal and exernal drive, that I am able to move all the games still on the PS4 to the internal drive. So I am going to format it and attach it to on of the Raspberry Pis and turn it into a 2TB NAS drive. The work I am doing on my home network is making it look almost professional. Firewalls, WiFi Mesh network, custom DHCP, in house DNS sever to both fillter out ads/malware sites and get updates from the DHCP server so I can connect to local boxes via a name and not just an IP address. Now I will have a nice little NAS (2TB) setup to go with all of this. Some of this is just repurposeing older hardware.

Well had another power failure (BGE has very bad at keeping the power on) So I have bout my modem, the router and the main switch, on a UPS. Since the DHCP and DNS servers are on Raspberry Pie I have a 30K mah battery pack I have not been using since we stuck in shutdown still, I put them on the battery pack, and plugged it in. So the core of my network should stay up when the power goes out (sad that I have to plan for power outages as they happen so often here, we have power stability that is as reliable as some 3rd world countries)

I been using Pi-Hole to block ad sites, and analytic sites that are used for tracking. Well since I added a custom list to block all google’s analytic sites I noticed that my google drive started to fail. So when I started to look into it, I found it uses the URL www.google-analytics.com and that the only way to upload to them, even 3rd party applications have to use that URL. So what am I to do, let google track me. Or, I do have a subscription to Office 365 from MS, along with said subscription they give you a 1TB of one drive storage. The program I used in the past to sync my google drive with my local storage also can sync with OneDrive (program is called inSync) And as I am not nearly as anti-MS as I was in the 90’s or early 00’s I am not opposed to using MS products now. I tested it, and I don’t have to let some tracking site be accessible from my home network to use it. So I went and deleted the files out of my google drive, then went and canceled my google extra storage space, and setup inSync to sync my main document directory to OneDrive (from under Linux) So now that $3 I don’t have to spend for 200GB of storage, as I have the 1TB from MS. Best part as MS is not a advertising company I can be a bit more secure in knowing they are not going scanning my documents to get advertisement data. So now as I type this, I am uploading the 111Gb of data I have in my main Data Directory. So in googles “need” to track everything they lost $3 a month from me. Why they would make the google drive go thought the main analytics URL is beyond me, but hay, I am now off of google there. I don’t even us Gmail, for email I have a rack space account for my email.

I just looked at what WiFi analizer shows for what is on the WifI airspace around where I live, in the building I live in there are 11 units, 1 is empty, and below is what the WiFi airspace looks like. This is one reason for things that need a good connection to the internet you want to hard wire them. The amount of traffic on the air is very high, and there are not that many people here.

Well it been a week and a half since I put the USG in as a firewall/router for my home network. On data point that I find interesting, is I look at my average transfer rate on my home network. I have a 1Gbit connection from Verizon, but do I really need that speed? The answer apparently no. looking over the 1, hour, 1 day, 1 week average, I never really go over 200Mbits and that is rarely and not for very long, only see it on the 1 day averages. But most times looking at the 1 week averages and the month one (not fully filled out) I vary rarely get an average over 50Mbits. So while I am going to keep the 1Gbit, as I started at a 75Mbit, and they offered me for $10 more a month when my 2 month contract was up 1Gbit, so for the few times I would like the higher speed, it will be nice to have, and as I said it is only $10 more then I was paying for 75Mbits. But if you are looking to get new services, think about how much you really need, do you really need 1Gbit? I am a single person, and even when I am streaming 1 HD videos I use about 50Mbits of data speed. Also remember for gaming you don’t need high bandwidth you just need low lag, and this not a measure of speed of data being downloaded but how long it takes for a message to be sent to the server and back, the data is not that much data, probably could be done in a few Kbits, it just how long it takes to get there and back. Yes it is still nice to say I have 1Gbit, but truth is I don’t need more then 100Mbits. See stats below for my last week of usage.

I am for fun watching the logs of my Pi-Hole (the local DNS server on my network) and it interesting to see how many requests are going on per second, and a lot of them are being blocked (resolving to 0.0.0.0) the requests for all kind of tracking sites (mostly google tracking sites, and many facebook tracking sites [and I don’t even have facebook open, they are really tracking people hard]) And this is while I am just sitting here doing nothing on the web (I do have many tabs open in my web browser like I normally do, probably ajax calls) I am just sitting at the computer watching the requests scroll by. Below is the stats for the Pi-Hole

Last week my guitar teacher and I had problems again with google duo connection for my weekly lessons, this is one of the issues we have had with google duo. The other issue is it only half duplex, not idea while taking music lessons, as when I am playing the guitar I can not hear my teacher. Well last week was for me the breaking point with google duo, as I missed my lesson as I never got notification of the call from my guitar teacher. So I suggested we at lest try MS Skype this week, he had not used Skype for a lesson before, and I was willing to try anything other the duo. Well we rescheduled my lesson for Friday (yesterday) We did not have any issue on connecting. and he even noted the audio was a lot clearer then it was on Duo. Also getting the sound into the computer is much easier as I have an old M-Audio that I had not been using and it has a guitar plug on it. So the music from the guitar was even clearer. Also I could hear my teacher when I was playing my guitar, Skype apparently is full duplex instead of half duplex like duo.

And what did I mean when I would not have believed you about this post in the 90’s or early 00’s, well back then I was extremely anti-Microsoft. I am still not a fan of Microsoft, but I will give it to them Skype apparently is a good piece of software. And my guitar teacher and I have agreed we will use it in the future. I am thinking I should scan my music into the computer so I can look at the screen while playing the guitar.

I still have Linux on all my personal computers (except one, and that is 8 computers all running Linux, and I very rearly use the window box, I am not counting the work laptop as that is not mine)

The latest thing I done for home network, is I set it up to connect to my T-Mobile hot spot if the main ISP goes down (this has not happened in the 6 years I have had Verizon, but it could away happen) So the plan is if the router losses connection to the internet via my Gbit connection it can switch over to the T-Mobile hot spot. True the Mobile Hot spot is much much slower then the Gbit connection but something will always be better then nothing. I have tested it, it takes a bit of time for the switch over, but the network really does not see a difference when the switch over happens all it sees is the internet is unreachable for about 30 to 60 seconds, then it come back. I have tested this and it works well enough. So now I plugged the hot spot into the main power line instead of leaving it just on the battery. I can still unplug it an take it with me when I go somewhere (if we are ever allowed to go back to our lives again, and these stupid lock downs ever end, but for now since we are still stuck at home and pretty much not allowed to go anywhere, it not an issue, the hot spot can stay plugged in, I can finally use it again after almost a year of having it and not using it, sure I am still not using it, but it there for a backup now)

Truth is it not an ideal solution, as it only has 10GB of usage allowed a month, I want to look into if I can white list what devices will stay online when it on the fail over, and what does not. No reason my consoles should stay on line, but I would want the security cameras around my home to stay on. My game computer can loss connection, but my work computer I would want to stay on. Things like that. So I have some things to look at for the weekend to see if I can set that up in the new router.