Article Date: 23/06/19
I love working with Technology, so it would make sense that I'm interested in it at my home personal life. I use this to develop my experience or have more control over my home network and have a play about with technology.
I'm tinkering a lot of the time with different technologies. Please note that this page only lists my CURRENT setup. Anything I'm looking at or developing is on my site blog page
Torrent Server
From time to time I need to share files with myself or others. I have my own private torrent server I use to host my files (all legal software / files). Files I normally host are ISO files for Operating Systems, or Firmware Files for mobile phones. I get sick of all the sites that give you a slow download speed without membership. Mine are full speed (that my connection allows)
I'm generally not that interested in Gaming. I suck at it, for the games I play they're mostly single-player. The computer I work from day-to-day has the following spec. This PC has been functional for me over the years so does what I need do. Is it slow or fast. Bit of both. But I use it for a lot of things and it's fast enough for what I want. It's my go-to computer for all my projects.
Other than every day work - this PC gets used for developing my deployment images. I'm looking at using WinPE or some other system to image and deploy computers on my home network
Motherboard : Gigabyte MA-770T-UD3P
Processor : AMD Athlon X4 640 CPU ( 4 x 3.0 GHZ)
RAM : Corsair 4 GB DDR3 RAM
HDD 1 {O/S) : Kingston 120GB SSD
HDD 2 {DATA} : Western Digital 2TD Green
Graphics Card : Nvidia Geforce GT240
Monitor : Panasonic 55" 4K TV
Keyboard : Logitech K120
Mouse : Logitech
PS4 with standard 500GB hard drive for some downtime
I love the Hikvision gear, it's simple at the moment
DVR : Hikvision DS-7204HUHI-K1 (Fitted with a 2TB Western Digital Purple HDD)
Camera : 1080p Model
My home Internet is provided through BT Infinity (Option 1) - 37.5 Mbps Downstream / 5.5 Mbps Upstream. Currently I'm using the standard BT Router and Home Hub (v3 I believe). I used to have Infinity 2 which supports up to 80 Mbps down, however I down graded my service on renewal. I'm too far from my local exchange for the line to support anything more than 40 Mbps.
My home networking is provided by a Cisco Catalyst 2950 Switch. It's a 16-port - Layer 3 Switch that supports 10/100 Speeds. It acts as the central point for all my home networking
Eventually I plan on paying for a BT Wholesale FTTP Installation with a dedicated line. This will give me 1:1 contention ratio, and being a business line, I will be able to sell off the services
Firewall - Other than BT firewall I have none, I'm currently experimenting with a pFSense firewall
I rarely print out documents in Colour in the house now. So abandoned my A4 colour printer (Canon Pixma MP180) and replaced it with a HP Laserjet 4350. I have previously worked with these models, and they're outstanding machines. Very fast too (around 60 pages per minute) - I purchased the 4350 DN Model (D means Duplexer - N means Network). So it has a dedicated JetDirect card and can print double sided. I can't really complain. I only paid £79 for it on eBay and it was delivered at my local Argos. The toner still has around 5000 pages of life left in it too
