Siegel Group Labs

8 months after moving to a larger home in Estes Park

• Replaced Comcast Cable Service with Trailblazer Broadband Fiber IP service. Full Gig up and down is niiiice.
• Added Starlink as a backup connection
• The old Netgate FW-7551F could only do about 600Mbps with netflow enabled, so I bought an SG-5100.
  • I initially ran the network with only the new firewall, but I recently re-deployed the old firewall to host the Starlink connection and configured them with CARP. I also set up synchronization of DHCP and FW rules between the two firewalls
• Added another Wireless Access Point (larger house) and had to replace the older Aruba AP-175 with a newer model outdoor WAP so we could upgrade code on the controller.
• Finally bought and deployed real licenses for a standalone Aruba Networks Virtual Mobility Controller and 5 AP’s (one to grow on)
• Started mining crypto in the crawl space.
• Neither Trailblazer nor Starlink have native v6, so I had to set up a tunnel to Hurricane Electric
• The Cisco UCS chassis hasn’t been powered up since we moved in March. Soon. Maybe. If the next round of power upgrades ever gets done.

Next up on the list:

Having redundant Internet connections and routers has already come in handy once, but if my switch or my primary server dies, my whole network (except the handful of hardwired devices I have) goes down

• Install redundant server
• move images from seagull over to it so I can re-image seagull from CentOS to Ubuntu.
• Install second switch
• Run second Cat6 from each Access Point to the new switch
• Split server connections across the pair of switches

• Network is very stable, even if not really “labbing” a whole lot.
• Still On Trial licenses for Aruba Virtual Mobility Master and Controller
• Starting to experiment with Homeassistant (hass.io) in preparation for all of the “smart things” I have planned for the new house
• The Cisco UCS chassis makes the garage sound like a legit data center when I power it on, so it stays powered down (and yet still consumes all of the space on my workbench).