All started a long time ago when I had little knowledge of networking, and
an ex wanted to share there houses net connection and network there computers.
I was gonna do the network as a token ring, and for some mis-guided reason
thought I needed a hub, so I bought an 8-port skymaster 10 base-t hub from
a computer fair. The network never happened the person who had a pc with modem
and internet connection didn't want "all" those cables coming into
her room... ah well. The hub was then used for lan parties and networking/internet
connection sharing with dads computer GAZ and R2D2.
I was organizing another lan and as the last lan party we had complained about
the crappy 10mb spped I thought an upgrade in order, I got a 24 port Alloy(which
I at the time didn't know was a good brand, heh now I resell them)10/100 switch
on ebay cheap(damn I am auction addicted). So the lan
came and went, the 8-port was indefinately loaned to my cousins, and the 24
port became the replacement for networking GAZ, R2D2
and KITT. It was used at another great lan party in copacobana. Then were
I was currently working moved, I moved too, got cable internet access and
had to share the connection, hmm router time. Bought a netgear rp114 cable/adsl
router from scorptec
the 24 port went into a box and stayed there for a while.
I then changed jobs and Fiona and I were on the move again(nomads, like father
like son), this time we decided against having the computer in the bedroom
as it caused problems. So we setup a dedicated computer room, but that meant
no sitting in bed using the computer enter wireless networking.
So I started a new job at a company called WDS, aka wireless data services. All this wireless stuff, bluetooth, csd, gprs, 802.11 was getting to me, I realised how cool it would be to setup a wireless side to my existing network. After having an argument with a new colleague about how much Wireless access points actually cost, I decided I would look on the net, I looked around at some really expensive ones in shops, damn there was a lot of markup on them back then in Australia, then came ebay, and my auctioning addiction took over before the day was out I had bid on 5 of them, thank god I only won one, a pretty good one actually. I decided when it seemed evident that I would win the Access point that maybe getting an 802.11b wireless card for my laptop kitt would be a good idea. More bidding...yay. Then I waited ages for the card, I didn't do my homework, and got an orinco bronze, I knew orinco's were good because of their stability and antenna out to be used for wardriving...more on that later. But a bronze only supports 2mbs...ouch, that meant that the network was slow, even the internet was, because you roughly halve it for wireless, which makes it 1mb/s and we had cable getting 800KB/s on the wired part of the network but which equates to 8mbs, hence the 1mbs the wireless card didn't cut it, it also didn't support security except for mac address security, so I used to turn the Access point on only when I or Fiona needed it...
While working at WDS they were going to through out about 5 of their old pc's all P1's, they were left to us to choose what parts we wanted, I scrounged up a decent motherbaord with onboard video an ATX with sdram slots, so I put it to use as garfield, a learning server and download box, it sat on-top of the old 15' monitor I used as a secondary sometimes for r2d2, I was planning on making it into its own little orange perspex case...more on this later.
Fiona was unhappy with the performance kitt was giving, so I decided I would build her a PC, but then we compromised, we would build new pc's for both of us eliminating some problems that I was having with R2D2. I bought two innexpensive and light midi tower cases that had 400w power supplies and thus started the construction of Alfa and Spidey before I even got a chance to paint them, our house was robbed, always an enjoyable occasion, they stole Kitt, and some other very important items of Fiona's, it still makes me mad... Kitt was eventually replaced and being ones to dwell we named it KittMkII. We got a new wireless card with it one that supported security and full 11mbps, but I still feel I was duped by the assesor into getting the model we did, don't get HP people, they suck... even though all the HPAUTHORISEDCUSTOMERS that I spoke to at Teletech should have told me of that. Lets just say it has issues.
Just after we got KittmkII we decided it was time to build Alfa and Spidey we built them at the same time, and decided the same components would be fine, turns out they were, I had allready painted and modded the cases, adding handles, fan holes, the famous alfa badge, and the Spiderman fan grill. Of course I can't paint for shit and am too impatient to do more than 2 coats, hence the shit result, but meh it works. Alfa's case window is good if I do say so myself.
So we had two new computers on the network, it was this time that catastrophe stuck. While doing some more mods on Garfield the crappy yum-cha brand drill I had decided it's reverse switch was going to change whilst I was drilling a peice of metal to mount Garfield's hard drive, the drill lept from my hands straight onto the motherboard of Garfield, it was over he had gone to a better place. Then as it always happens, R2D2, didn't want to boot anymore, ahhh, not R2D2 as well, Fiona wanted to see me happy and told me to fix it, so I looked around, I couldn't really tell what was wrong I thought either dodgy Power supply, dodgy motherboard, or shot CPU. So I decided as I would probably have to replace them all anyway, may as well do them all at once, got a used dual AMD (I was converted from the staleness of Intel) motherboard of the overclockers.com.au forums, and bought some expensive ecc ddr-ram and a nice 550w powersupply from antec, all fixed...YAY, the transplant was a complete success, but now I had the new antec fan control that controlled the power supply's fans and any directly connected to its special fan connectors, so I modded it into my existing digi-doc.
I had done a bit of "wardriving" with the first incarnation of Kitt, now with an 11mbps card with better range I could do more, I eventually got another orinco card of ebay and built an antenna which you can see at Kitt's homepage.
I think that about does it for the timeline, I am a bit addicted to networking, so more upgrades coming :P
Well here finally is my networking section, more info etc coming soon, below you will see my current and future network setup.
Here is my current network setup. I changed from the mspaint version of the image to one I drew in open office's draw application, it is free and good. You can see each of the computers names and it's method of connection as well as their operating system (by the symbols near each of the PC's) the server is r2d2, ip addresses ommited. Alfa is fiona's computer, r2d2 is the server, and webserver hosting this and a few other pages, Spidey is my game and design box. The access point a nice little d-link 802.11b ebay buy. Kitt is the laptop currently used as a dvd player and entertainment box for the television, it is occasionally connected via cat5 to the router instead of the via the ap. The other laptops are MrHankey and old toshiba I use a bit, that is running Ubuntu (linux) in fact I am using it to write this, and Wiggum is a work in progress to get a pc to monitor motion sensors and send alerts photos etc via gsm (mobile network). The router is a nice netgear that I got from scorptech, and that plugs into a dlink dsl modem that connects to the net to get our static ip address.
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