There was a day not long ago when a home network was a small, simple affair involving one to three PCs and perhaps a router. The ubiquity of Wi-Fi and various Internet-connected devices has changed all of that, and now many of us are network admins presiding over a pretty sophisticated mix of devices, from game consoles to entertainment devices to phones.
Personally, I have a home and home-office setup that involves a host of PCs, two VoIP lines, a wireless color laser printer/copier/fax/scanner, a bevy of netbooks and notebooks, at least one smart phone, a Wii, an HTPC, and… wow. Other stuff, too, I believe. My router is a spiffy Netgear dual-band model with multiple radios, and we have well over a terabyte of online storage, with mirroring and weekly backups.
Sounds like work!
Actually, most of the time, things work pretty seamlessly together, and the functionality of it all is quite nice to have. Management isn’t too hard, either, all told—no multicast IP routing has thus far been required.
What’s your home network look like these days? How many clients? Mostly wireless or are some still wired? What speeds do you support for each? How many fancy features do you have, like a DMZ or custom routing? Did you ever expect to be coming home and doing network admin for this many clients? Discuss.