Technology is central to our family’s existence. it is our everyday. Jeffrey has been hustling in the IT world since he was in high school. we made our living for more than 15 years running an online business. technology has just always been a part of us and we’ve always been a part of the technology world.
Because of that, our home network has been incredibly high on our list of important things.
Wired home.
When we built our current home over 17 years ago, jeffrey wired the house himself. he wired ethernet cable through the entire house - up and down, inside and out, planning for future expansion and future technology.
where normal houses have a telephone ports, we have ethernet ports, multiple ethernet ports in fact - everywhere. multi locations in every room, every nook and cranny.
all of the wires converge in the basement into a punchdown block. This then is connected to a wall mounted network rack. its pretty fancy schmancy. to see all of these wires come from all over into this giant braided mass of cord that all runs into the punchdown block and the network rack.
Internet Connection.
our internet connection is amazing. and it has to be because of what we used to do and what he does now. ( IT Guru Guy Freelancer). Also, because we are basically cord cutters, where we don’t use regular cable or phone services, and most of our technology runs on our internet or home connection we need to have the best connection we can actually get to our location.
Most internet connections are 60-100Mb. We used to have a 300Mb connection and NOW we have 1Gig … amazing. So amazing that it is actually faster than some our technology can actually push.
Home Server.
We have a home server. It does a ton of stuff that makes our life awesome. It does a lot of the work for us so that our local laptops and desktop machines don’t have to. All of the connected devices get backed up to it on a regular basis. It also houses a ton of our documents. and it is the home to our famous and well loved Movie Server.
When one of us downloads an app or a program, it is all housed on this server so that the next time one of us connects and wants to do that same app or program it literally takes us seconds to download.
Connected Equipment.
All of the equipment that is stationary and can be plugged in to the network, are plugged into the network through one of the ethernet ports that are wired everywhere, rather than using the wifi. This includes all of the TVs, desktop computers, printers, scanners, gaming equipment, some of the speakers, and all of the Apple TVs.
We have one big desktop that is kind of central to the network. It acts as a backup to the server. It is where our photo library is connected and all of our photo sharing runs through it. It backs up locally, to the server downstairs and online every single day.
Wireless router.
We then have an Apple Airport Extreme wireless router that serves up all of our wireless devices. Because all of the above mentioned equipment is connected to the network, all of those things can be accessed at any time from any of our wireless devices, like our phones.
We can print to any of the printers or scanners. we can connect to any of the speakers, TVs, Apple TVs, desktops or servers from any of our laptops or iPhones from anywhere in our house.
All of this special connectivity allows us to be able to reach our network from anywhere in the house.
Laptops.
We all have a laptop to ourselves. this is a place where we have hacked our life. most of these laptops are not new, and vary in age and size. but each person has one. it is important to us to have one for each of us. As the kids have gotten older their reliance on the computers for school has gotten great. it became important to us as their needs for space and speed grew also. each person has their own files, programs, apps and things that are needed and are important to them. also, having their own means that no one is corrupting any one’s laptop, taking too much time on one or putting any information or files on someone else’s laptop.
