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[bitman]

I have a laptop as my home controller running 24/7.

I can't stand the thought of it just loafing around the house like a common teenager so I'm going to give it another job. Tonight it is getting a 500gb usb drive hooked up to it so it can back itself up at night and be a "NAS on the cheap" file server to receive backups from the other pcs in the house as well as a general purpose storage area. It already has a static ip bound to it so what the hey, may as well have it earn it's keep.

[Dan Lawrence]

Sounds like a plan!!!   

[HA Dave]

I have a laptop as my home controller running 24/7. I can't stand the thought of it just loafing around the house like a common teenager....

I like that expression... and the idea. I am trying to get my old P3 HA PC to do part-time video recording.. as well as Warnings, Alerts, and BVC duty.

[Bill H]

My AHP system runs 24/7 and holds all music (with Playlists), photo, data and backup files for use on all other computers on the network around the house. If any computer updates any of the files, all other computers can then use the new info, too. Backups are much easier and are performed on internal drives and external USB drives for safety.

[x10dude]

I've actually gone the other way around. My now-full-time AHP machine used to be my "main" server (3ghz processor, 2g RAM, 500g hdd) that stored music, data backups, and the like. However, because I've now exposed it to the outside world (so I can connect to it remotely), I've removed all my important data - including music.

Does any of you have the AHP machine connected to the outside world? Is security and hacking not a concern of yours? Just curious, more than anything. BTW, I'm not talking about AHP's online feature. I did a lot of research and decided to go with LogMeIn. It works well with my cell phone and any other machine on the internet that has Internet Explorer installed.

[HA Dave]

...My now-full-time AHP machine...(3ghz processor, 2g RAM, 500g hdd)

Wow... that would be nice for HA. I am using an old doorstop of a PC I rescued from the trash. A P3 that I used an old 20G HD I had... and bought more RAM from a flea market.

I allow my HA PC some limited access to the Internet (everything else is blocked). However... I don't believe the home networks are as beneficial as they are a virus/worm risk, in most cases. Back in the days when AOL was another word for Internet... most threats targeted the individual PC. However nowadays most viruses and worms are network centric.

I use a router with a firewall... and each PC has a firewall and virus protection. No PC can see another PC, and none are run as admin.

[bitman]

Not mine, yet.
Someday maybe I'll blow a hole in my router to Tserv into it, but I have no reason to do so right now except for maybe debugging macros from work that are giving me fits.

[x10dude]

Interesting. The reason why I went to such a relatively powerful machine is because I had too many issues running AHP (with the VA12a) on a Toshiba laptop (1.3ghz, 1g ram, 100g hdd). It would bring the laptop down to its knees - to the point where I couldn't even start another application. I was surprised at first, but moved my machines around anyway. I now use the laptop as my Lola server, which is connected to my audio system and has all my music.

After futher debugging AHP, I realized that the VA12a driver was so buggy with multiple memory leaks that I removed video all together from AHP configuration and downgraded to AHP 2.28, which is what I'm running on this machine now.

I neglected to mention that I also have a video surveillance (DVR) client application running on this machine all the time. This client is connected to a networked DVR (higher level than the PC since it runs off of a switch, where the router which connects the PC is.) Because the DVR client for my cell phone is very unreliable, when I use LogMeIn, I can also see my DVR client app on the same AHP machine to see everything around the house (from my cell).

I also have multiple firewalls (1 at the main router level, 1 at the PC's subnet level (a wi-fi router), and 1 at the PC level - software based). I've had many "xmas tree" attacks to my subnet recently, so I'm trying to figure out what might be causing it.

As for my network layout, I do share connections among machines because I have a shared printer, shared backup, shared music library, and multiple clients (each family member has a computer + children's friends when they visit.) I have two subnets (essentially 2 wi-fi networks off of the aforementioned switch.)