On Sat, Sep 1, 2018 at 5:21 PM, Andrew Lunn <andrew at lunn.ch> wrote: >> The 'radio', as it called by my isp is outside about 45 m away on a >> tall roof with a >> 3 m mast on it with the radio on the mast. The ethernet cable runs >> from that 'radio' >> to the house where there is a little box (with plugs to provide power >> to the 'radio') > > That is probably a power over Ethernet, PoE, injector. It puts power > in the Ethernet cable to power whatever is on the mast. I think so but as I'm not sure I'll stop there. > >> all of which I have zero control over. The first piece after this >> little box (and its about 3 cm x 5 cm x 12cm outside so its quite >> small) is my router and and and. > > So this first box of yours should be the center of your world: > > It gets its WAN IP address using a DHCP client on the WAN port, > connecting to the radio up the mast. > > It does NAT out the 'WAN' port. > > It runs a DHCP server, giving out IP addresses to all you devices. It > is a good idea to give each of your devices a fixed IP address. I have had only one static address and it is for the server. Haven't set up all the items with static mainly using dhcp and its worked so far. Part of the issue is the smart phone and the tablet and the streaming box and the 2 laptops and the other computer (all on wireless) and then there are the main box and the server and the printers. dhcp makes things a little less complicated, when it works that is - - - grin. > > It does DNS for everything in your home network. It can relay requests > to your ISP, or to 8.8.8.8. But ideally you want it to answer when > somebody ask about server.home, ipad.home, laptop.home, or whatever > you call your devices. What you don't want is the devices in your > house directly using the DNS servers of your ISP. If your ISP falls > over, it does not matter if you cannot resolve names on the internet, > but you do want names for your own devices to keep working. So they > need a use a local DNS server which is still running. So I need to set up a local dns server - - - okay - - - on the order paper (that list keeps expanding and the items aren't coming off near as fast as new ones are hitting!). > > In my case, i have a WiFi access point doing all this, running a > recent OpenWRT image. It could be for your use case, the typical 4 > Ethernet interfaces of a WiFi access point are not enough. But you can > expand that by daisy chaining any old dumb Ethernet switch with more > ports. Its this first box that does all the real work. > > It is not a black art, but it is something most people never need. All > their devices are just clients connecting to servers on the > Internet. But when you have your own NAS box, Linux desktop, media > server connected to a TV, lots of embedded devices in the cellar which > you are kernel hacking on, VPN connection to the mother-in-laws home > for off site backup, etc, you quickly need more than just clients > connecting to the Internet. I'm looking at a lot more connection points and that's why I've been looking into networking. There seems little besides the obvious and then the idea to hire a consultant for the really complex and not much in between. Thanks for the ideas!! Dee