@EddieJennings said in Redoing Home Network:

@jmoore said in Redoing Home Network:

@EddieJennings said in Redoing Home Network:

@jmoore said in Redoing Home Network:

@Dashrender said in Redoing Home Network:

I've with JB - You should save the money and get an ER-4. The processor is the same.

POE can be done in the switches, so no need for that in the router.
The ER-4 is nearly half the ER-6.

I already ordered the pieces. Thanks for your input though. I needed a router with 4 ports for my 4 rooms plus the incoming port. I plan to use and learn everything about it.

So each room will be its own network?

Each room will have an 8-port switch because everyone has a lot of devices.

And since those switches will be going to a unique port on your router, they'll each be unique subnets (networks).

It's a good idea to have small switches in each room but normally you would do it like this:

If you wanted to have different networks inside the infrastructure, you'd use VLANs.
If you wanted to use PoE devices like security cameras, IP phones etc, you'd do PoE on the access switches.
If you'd want high performance the core switch would have 10 gigabit ports.
APs could also be connected in different places, for instance on the access switches.

@Dashrender said in Redoing Home Network:

@Pete-S said in Redoing Home Network:

@Dashrender said in Redoing Home Network:

I've with JB - You should save the money and get an ER-4. The processor is the same.

POE can be done in the switches, so no need for that in the router.
The ER-4 is nearly half the ER-6.

Isn't POE also better in the switches? I thought Ubiquity used some odd DIY standard for POE, at least in the past.

They still do in some places.

Yeah, you're right. Had a look right now and ER-6P has non-standard PoE. Hopefully no one plugs in the wrong thing in a port that has PoE switched on. My guess is that the purpose with that was to power APs directly and not much else.

99% of Ubiquity's switches (except the lowest cost ones) that has PoE follows the PoE standards (802.3af, 802.3at and 802.3bt).

@JasGot said in Sending Secure E-Mail?:

The dept is engaged in a grant program with the State Department of Environment…, which requires us to include our banking information on every reimbursement application.

Come to think of it, banking information is not really sensitive info, is it? If you send an invoice to anyone, they have your banking information.

The only risk here is a man-in-the-middle attack where banking information is changed on the application while it's being submitted. So that the money is transferred into another account.

So do the company send all their invoices and ordinary mail containing banking info by registered mail in locked containers, so it is secure from end to end?

If not, then email isn't any less secure.

I like the ones where you can change everything and pick out exactly what you want and put it where you want. Because I don't like anyone's default settings.

I used to run Gnome 2, XFCE and LXDE. For users now we put Ubuntu with Gnome 3 on every machine but I haven't actually tried to see if it's still 100% configurable. My guess is that it isn't.

@Dashrender said in Redoing Home Network:

I've with JB - You should save the money and get an ER-4. The processor is the same.

POE can be done in the switches, so no need for that in the router.
The ER-4 is nearly half the ER-6.

Isn't POE also better in the switches? I thought Ubiquity used some odd DIY standard for POE, at least in the past.

@brandon220 said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

@Pete-S I turned off the R410s and 510 last year. I'm currently running a newer "entry-level" server as my VM host. It has a low-end Xeon and maxes out at 32G of RAM. I have been shopping around for a while for a more robust host but can't decide on anything.

The ReadyNAS units were free and new from a relative's business that shut down. They are EOL now and slower than I would like. I plan on a similar setup to what I have now - Plex as a VM and the new storage server as a VM with an NFS share for Plex. I don't believe I will need hardware transcoding for Plex.

Why can't you just put some drives in your VM host and use that as storage? Or do you want a host with more RAM / cores as well?

@marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

It really depends how much storage and CPU you need. If you need lots of storage, nothing beats unlimited, and I think only G Suite Business is viable option. I know lots of people host Plex with Hertzner, Vultr is probably attractive option too.

I had a look and it looks like you need 5 minimum users on G Suit Business to get unlimited TBs. If it's $12 per month then that becomes $60 per month. Under a five year period that's $3600.

Not saying it's the same thing but for the exact same money you can buy 9 x 16TB enterprise drives with 5 year warranty. That's about 100 TB of actual storage.

Using Drive makes sense in your case but if someone only needs say 10-15 TB, I'm not sure it does. And 10 TB may not sound like a lot but if we are talking about H.264 video it's more than 3000 movies/5000 episodes. Even if you binge watch 5 hours a day, every day, it will take about 3 years to get through it.

@brandon220 said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

I currently have 2 ReadyNas 2100 units with 5 TB. One is primary and the other is a backup copy. They are used strictly as storage for Plex. I am out of space and need more. I can upgrade the drives for more storage space but the NAS is not very fast, taking into consideration that it is an older unit.
My thoughts were to set up a new server with samba to serve Plex, and re-purpose the older NAS units as backup targets for the new "solution". Plex runs as a VM and there is not enough storage on the existing host. I need another solution.

Would a new NAS be a better solution or a linux server with samba shares for movies and music? Is there a better solution?

With a NAS you get the OS they decided on and the hardware they picked.
With a server you can get whatever you want both software and hardware.

A NAS is consumer components all the way through unless it's a high end unit with a high end price.

A server doesn't have to big or bulky or noisy or power hungry just because they commonly are. Plenty of other options around other than an old R710.

And there is also the possibility of assembling something yourself using server components or a mix of server and consumer components. For instance you might want to have remote management capability which you only have on servers but you don't need hot swap power supplies. Perhaps you want hot swap drive bays or you are fine mounting the drives internally. Perhaps you only need 2 or 4 drives for data but you want to have SSDs for running VMs. Or you need 24 drive bays but want it to be low power.

There is also the educational aspect of building and using a server versus a NAS which might matter. While a NAS is plug and play and often cheaper, your ROI might be higher using a server.

@Pete-S said in Sending Secure E-Mail?:

@scottalanmiller said in Sending Secure E-Mail?:

@Pete-S said in Sending Secure E-Mail?:

@scottalanmiller said in Sending Secure E-Mail?:

@Pete-S said in Sending Secure E-Mail?:

@scottalanmiller said in Sending Secure E-Mail?:

The system admin can always get the key out of your email and open whatever has been sent.

Completely incorrect as well. The public key can only be used for encryption, not decryption.

Oh, right, okay, having a "duh" moment. So you can send your public key via email, and ANYONE can send you an encrypted email, but ONLY to you. Because you have the private decryption key.

You are right, I follow now. That could work.

No problem. I'm not a crypto guy but we used PGP encrypted email for many years so I know the basic principles.

I've used it, but I was adding in the incorrect assumption that everything had to be done only on the sender's end. Which if you did that, encrypting with PGP and sending the key with it, anyone who intercepted would be able to read. But if the recipient can send the key too, then yeah, obviously that works great.

It's pretty easy to install and use nowadays, especially if you are just a couple of persons. You just install the add-on needed depending on your email client. Then you have to tell it what you want your passphrase to be and it will create your public and private key for you.

All you have to do then is email your public key to whomever you want to be able to receive secure emails from. And they'll do the same.

When you receive a secure email you have to enter your passphrase to read it.

Writing this I think the best way to use this for ordinary business use is to only send encrypted email when you are sending something sensitive, like passwords or stuff like that.

Problem with encrypted email (and also it's strength) is that you can't read it if you don't have your private key and passphrase. But it makes it complicated reading email on different devices and software unless you copy your private key everywhere and enter your passphrase on a number of insecure devices. Which defeats the security aspect of it.

So it works best on desktop clients and if you only encrypt when really needed, you are not much affected by the drawbacks. If you try to read an encrypted email on a devices that doesn't support it you'll just see an attachment that is just gibberish as my earlier post shows.

@scottalanmiller said in Sending Secure E-Mail?:

@Pete-S said in Sending Secure E-Mail?:

@scottalanmiller said in Sending Secure E-Mail?:

@Pete-S said in Sending Secure E-Mail?:

@scottalanmiller said in Sending Secure E-Mail?:

The system admin can always get the key out of your email and open whatever has been sent.

Completely incorrect as well. The public key can only be used for encryption, not decryption.

Oh, right, okay, having a "duh" moment. So you can send your public key via email, and ANYONE can send you an encrypted email, but ONLY to you. Because you have the private decryption key.

You are right, I follow now. That could work.

No problem. I'm not a crypto guy but we used PGP encrypted email for many years so I know the basic principles.

I've used it, but I was adding in the incorrect assumption that everything had to be done only on the sender's end. Which if you did that, encrypting with PGP and sending the key with it, anyone who intercepted would be able to read. But if the recipient can send the key too, then yeah, obviously that works great.

It's pretty easy to install and use nowadays, especially if you are just a couple of persons. You just install the add-on needed depending on your email client. Then you have to tell it what you want your passphrase to be and it will create your public and private key for you.

All you have to do then is email your public key to whomever you want to be able to receive secure emails from. And they'll do the same.

When you receive a secure email you have to enter your passphrase to read it.